Clay in the Creator’s Hands
“Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand..”
Many years ago when I my husband and I were running a business I did a Women in Leadership course called Walking with Wolves – and yes I did go for a walk with a wolf!
Part of this course was learning about yourself and being able to recognise bits of yourself that other people might find annoying or overwhelming. Whilst I learnt lots of things on this course, one or two of them stayed with me. One thing that I did learn was that I was really rude sometimes. I didn’t mean to be; it was part of my personality that I had never really given any thought to. I learnt that I interrupted people… a lot!
I finished their sentences for them with what I thought they were going to say, got a bit overexcited when there was a good idea going on that I had a lot to say about…. And quite often I had a lot to say!
I didn’t like some of the bits of me that were being pointed out to me even though they were said in a kind, gentle way. I wasn’t the only one in the room looking a bit sheepish. But I took it on board and tried to do better. If you see me in a meeting now, I’m quite often sitting with my hand over my mouth to make sure I do not interrupt people when they are speaking. I learnt to listen a bit more and think carefully about what I am about to say; is it relevant? How can I say it nicely? How does this person in front of me like to be spoken to?
All of this happened before I started working properly for God. I had made him a promise when I was about 15 and realised, when he called it in when I was in my 30’s, that all the things I had done, the difficult times I had been through and all that I had learnt about myself up to that point, had been God’s training session for me. He had used all my life experiences, the sad times and the traumas as well as all the fun and happy times, to shape my thinking. He used them to tweak my heart and mould me so that I was ready to go and do what he was asking of me.
I still need a bit of smoothing and shaping but that is the whole point really. God never stops working on us and guiding us to be the person he planned us to be. Interestingly, there are over 90 references in the bible that talks about humans being like clay so I guess we all still need a bit of tweaking.
God is always moulding us and changing us. He wants us to be like His Son Jesus so He is always in the process of making us to be like Him. He's teaching us; He's disciplining us. Even when bad things happen to us or those around us, God is using these bad times to change us and shape us.
God has a purpose for each of us, and He wants us to fulfill it.
Remember, just like clay, we are always in God’s loving hands. He shapes us and moulds us and uses us for His glory.
So lets stay soft and squishy and open to God so he can do His work in our lives.
