Potter’s Clay

We are all the work of God’s hand.

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are our potter. Is 64:8

There is a television commercial that zooms in on the hands of a potter and her foot on the pedal controlling the potter’s wheel. The wet clay oozes between her fingers as she shapes her creation. A somewhat demented expression of ecstasy settles across her face.

But the ecstatic visage is as a result of daydreaming about putting a sporty car through its paces on an open road. As the potter melts deeper into her dream and her ecstasy, she treads harder on the pedal, causing the potting wheel to accelerate and the clay in her hands to deform and be flung around the room.

The commercial brings to mind the passage from Isaiah offering the image of God as a potter and we as clay. But, do you ever feel like the world is the out-of-control wheel, flinging the fragile clay that is your life about the studio?

While life may feel like this at times, it isn’t a result of God running amuck in the studio. That is not God’s nature. No, when life feels as flung about as the potter’s clay, it is more than likely that our hands have replaced God’s gentle but firm caress of the matter of our life. Our replacement of a focus on God’s purposes with a view to self-indulgence has sent the wheel out of control.

Consider Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans that I have for you, plans for your good and not for your harm, to give you a future with hope.” THAT is God’s nature. When we trust his plan the outcome is always the best that it could be. When we put careless hands to the clay of our lives, or when we decide that we know better than God, we become poor stewards of the multitude of blessings with which God graces us. Then the potter’s clay is flung about in chaos, not through God’s doing, but through our careless stewardship of his blessing.

It comes down to making a choice. Decision permeates stewardship. In order for our stewardship to matter, in order for our love of and faithfulness to God to matter, we have to have the freedom to chose whether or not to express that love through our stewardship. Without that freedom, there would be no love involved, just blind obedience.

Theologian Karl Barth explains this concept in “The Humanity of God- The Gift of Freedom.” “The event of man’s freedom is the event of his thankfulness for the gift, of his sense of responsibility as a receiver, of his loving care of what is given him. It is his reverence before the free God who accepts him as His partner without relinquishing His sovereignty. This event alone is the event of freedom.”

One of God’s great gifts to us is the freedom to choose whether or not to love and be faithful to him. We are truly free when we chose to follow him. We are truly free when we dedicate all that we have to bring glory to God. We are enslaved by sin when we chose what we mistakenly think is freedom; doing it our way. How we use God’s gracious provision reflects how fully we understand where our freedom truly lies. That is stewardship.