Friday, April 2, 2010

A Lesson Learned about the Potter from a "potter" Who Can't Pot Pots

I MADE SOMETHING in ceramics today. But you have been taking this class all semester, you might say. I'll leave it at mentioning that there is a reason that I am a music/English person and NOT an art major. The potter's wheel is totally not my gig. [As a side bar, the song "Hands of the Potter" by Caedmon's Call would play on my iPod while I worked on the wheel . . . I used to like that song . . . and it always made me groan inside because God did not give me any kind of artistic gift when it comes the the pottery wheel.] Anyway, today we worked on a hand-building project. Mine actually LOOKS like something! It'll (hopefully) end up as a really neat looking pitcher when it is all finished. Needless to say, when I think of God as the Potter, He'll be hand-building and not working on a wheel from now on! Not only did I actually enjoy the class today, but I found hand-building to be very relaxing, rewarding, and fulfilling (anything is fulfilling to me when it doesn't flop!).

All this being said, ceramics has definitely given me a much different view of and appreciation for God. For those people who are like me, pottery is HARD! To actually form a perfect cylinder on a quickly spinning wheel is impossible. Why even try? After weeks and weeks (and hours and hours--like eight a week) of practice, my cylinders STILL were slightly (I'm being nice to myself here) misshapen, lopsided, and more like 6.5-7'' instead of 8''. As I said, two words describe using a potter's wheel: IM-POSSIBLE! There were those, I admit, in the class, to whom God has given a much larger portion of potter's talent. Even for them, however, it took a lot of practice and, more importantly, patience. I know that all things are easy for God, but it really says something that we are compared to vessels that take so much care to make.

Think about God when He is described as the Potter. In order to make anything that even slightly looks like anything on a pottery wheel, one must devote much time and effort, love and patience, and passion to his project. The work is not easy, but when you do actually have something finished, it almost kills you just to move it because you do not want to destroy that which you put so much into making. If I feel that way about a short, droopy "cylinder," how must God feel about us, His creations?

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