“Back to a lump again? Oh, come on,
God. I came from a lump of clay. I’ve moved beyond that!” I
groaned and moaned under His persistent squeezing and pummeling.
God, the Master Potter, went right on
kneading me. “It’s like this,” He explained,
although He really didn’t owe me an explanation. “We made you in
Our Own image but you got messed up in spite of being in My hand.”
“Well, I sure don’t understand how
that could happen,” I winced from an unusually painful thump of His
fist.
“I don’t expect you to.
Nevertheless, it's a fact. It happens because We made you with a free
will. You can turn to your own ways and miss My best plan because of
some of your choices.”
“Oh!” I drew back. “That hurts! I
don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I suppose You are going to say
that it hurts You more than it does me.”
“As a matter of fact, it does. You will never understand the anguish I felt when I allowed
My Son to go to His death on the Cross to make you a new vessel in the
first place.
“But this working over is so painful.
Is it a punishment?”
“No, My child. You have My Son’s
nature now, but you don’t look much like My Son yet. You need to be
worked into His image” He answered tenderly.
“But do you have to do it with such
pressure? All that stretching, pushing and pounding?”
“Trust me, there is no other way. I
do it because I love you. You are in process, and I am pleased with
the way you are being changed from one degree of glory to another.”
“But all this changing...I feel as if I’m losing my
identity.”
“Don’t worry about your identity.
There has never been anyone like you nor will there ever be. I’m
not in the business of destroying My children's distinctiveness but making them whole.”
He slapped me on the potter’s wheel
and everything began to spin.
“I’m going in circles. This is
meaningless!” I screamed.
The whirling didn’t stop but His
hands always caressed me gently, reassuringly. Lovingly He reformed
the lump that was my distinctive personhood into the likeness of His
Son while retaining my identity. I began to relax and submit to His
tender touch, yielding myself to His perfecting process.
Eventually He released the pressure and
removed me from the wheel. He looked me over and smiled with
satisfaction.
Painful though it had been, at last I
looked up gratefully into The Master Potter's face. “Thanks, Lord—I
needed that!”
****
From THE RESOURCE BOOK
Jeremiah 18:4, combining NASB and TLB
translations.
“But the vessel (jar) that he was
making (forming) of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter;
(didn’t turn out as He wished) so He remade it (kneaded it into a
lump) into another vessel, (started again) as it pleased the potter
to make.”
Romans 9:20 NASB
“On the contrary, who are you, O man,
who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder,
‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it?”
(An excerpt from another of Leona's forthcoming books: GOTHIC ARCHIE AND OTHER IMAGINEERINGS: Fables of God's Kingdom for Grown-ups)
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