purpose

Pottery & The Spiritual Life

Creativity, Ministry, Prayer, purpose, purpose, renewal, Spirituality, Stress, Uncategorized

“So God created humankind (Adam) in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  ~~ Genesis 1:27

A second creation account in Genesis 2:7 says that the LORD God formed the  man Adam out of the dust of the ground (adamah) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. I remember my professor in Bible 101 saying that the image of the Hebrew word is that of God at a potter’s wheel, molding a lump of clay under his hands until it has conformed to the shape God has in mind.

This isn’t an easy task, at least not for the clay! First the clay has to be dug up from the earth and removed from where it has so peaceably resided. I think of the trauma of childbirth. We come from the safety and comfort of the womb where sounds and lights  are all muted and darkened. Suddenly we are thrust out into a bewildering brightness and a cacophony of sounds and images.  No wonder we scream with our eyes closed when we take our first breaths!

Once the potter has the clay in hand, he works the clay to drive out any stray air bubbles that linger inside by slamming the clay repeatedly onto a plaster slab. Life does the same to us also, as events slam into us: as a child we might have to deal with being picked last for a team or with being bullied. As a teen we deal with sweetheart issues, friend problems and peer pressure.  As we get older, we have grown up problems that slam us against this plaster slab: divorce, death, disease, job loss, infertility, addiction, caretaking our parents, and other events of the human condition.

We begin to ask the ultimate questions at some point in this beating: What is the meaning of my life? What is the purpose of my life? Is this all there is for me? What good have I done? Will some good come from all this pain? Is there more to life that this present condition? Is there any reason for me to live with hope? As the final slams of the clay drive out all the remaining bubbles of air, the clay is ready for shaping on the wheel.

The person of faith doesn’t have to wait for old age to ask these ultimate questions, since they can be asked at any age. Likewise, they don’t hold God accountable for the pains in their life, for they know that God uses the circumstances of their life to work for the ultimate good. God doesn’t cause the pains, but God uses our present pains to prepare our lives for something more.

“We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8). When life has been hardest on us, we most feel like the clay that has been slammed against the plaster slab. We no longer have any air inside us, so we feel dead inside. Whether we are 29, 39, or 69, God is ready to mold us to his purposes on his wheel. At this point, if we are people of faith, we ask God to reshape us into his image, for we are now ready to give up on our quest to make ourselves into our own image. The clay is ready to be worked by the Master Potter.

The death of our striving for self is what God was waiting for, so that he could breath new life into our lifeless bodies. His reforming us is part of our rebirth and restoration to the image of God that was our original birthright, but was lost to the stain of generations of sin, including our own.

A potter makes a vessel on a wheel by taking a prepared lump and throwing it down hard onto the wheel. When God gets my attention, I usually feel like this—slammed! But then, I’m pretty hardheaded and usually need wake-up calls. The gentle stirrings in my heart usually aren’t enough for me.

The clay isn’t exactly centered, however, so the potter places one hand flat on top and the other hand vertical on the side of the clay. He kicks the wheel and begins to press down and in with equal pressure in both hands until the clay between is “centered.” Most of us don’t spend enough time letting God center us, and that has adverse effects on the final product. If the clay isn’t truly centered, the pot being raised will begin to wobble and its walls will warp out of shape.  It won’t be either a beautiful or a useful pot, but will be destroyed and thrown back into the clay pits for the recovery of the raw materials.  The process of slamming will begin again.

Some of us “clay pots” don’t learn very quickly because we seem to have a mind of our own: “you turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing say to its Master, ‘He did not make me’, or the thing formed say of the one who formed it ‘He has no understanding’?” (Is 29:16). God had to get me to a place where I had lost everything in which I had ever trusted or hoped in, a place in which “I was emptied of air,” before I could finally see my one true hope and my one steadfast trust was Jesus Christ. I had to be prepared by loss so that I could be formed into something new and useful for God.

My prayer for you is that you are smarter than I am and you learn from my life. But even if you are just like me, the good news is that God can make the sorriest lump of clay into the most beautiful and useful pottery vessels because he delights in creating beauty!

Into the Light

Creativity, home, Meditation, Ministry, poverty, Prayer, purpose, renewal, sleep, Spirituality, Stress, Uncategorized, vision

Light & Shadow

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,    in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you  out of darkness into his marvelous light.” ~~ 1 Peter 2:9

 

Darkness and light are what make an object appear three-dimensional on a flat surface. The object in the shadows is more hidden and the light reveals more of its true nature. Likewise, we are not our true selves when we are in the darkness. When we are in the light, we are more like who we were born to be: the image of the living God whom we know in Jesus Christ.  We are called out of the darkness of ordinary life into the life and light of Christ when Christ claims us in our professing of faith in his life, death and resurrection for our salvation.  When we give up trying to save ourselves, we proclaim his mighty deeds with our walk, our witness, and our service to the body of Christ we know both as “the church” and “the poor.”  Jesus said to those who were faithful, “I was hungry and you gave me food…” (Matt 25:35).

The beginning artist sometimes has difficulty getting either enough light or enough shadow in their painting or drawings. The values all tend toward the middle range; there’s not enough contrast to emphasize any area of their work. Rembrandt knew how to make his works sing! He always had enough darkness to make the lights seem very bright indeed. Even this unfinished painting has enough contrasts of light and dark to define the light from the shadows.

Our faith lives sometimes lack contrast because they aren’t different from the lives the world leads. We don’t “shine like stars in the world” which is in darkness (Phil 2:15). We aren’t the contrast that the world is looking for, and so our lives aren’t attractive to them.  We live “gray lives” when instead our lives should be full of the light of Christ!

Perhaps we don’t hear the call of God clearly enough, for the sound of “sheer silence” or the still small voice of God that Elijah heard in the wilderness isn’t very often heard in the midst of the rush and busyness of human life. (1 Kings 19:12).  God’s voice is more often heard when we are ourselves still, silent, apart and waiting expectantly and often. This alone is reason enough to find the appointed place and time for each of us to “meet God,” to be found waiting faithfully for his appearance and his affirmation by his calling our name, “God’s own people,” “My Beloved.”

Just as I have my appointed place to work—my studio—I also have my appointed places to meet God.  My easy chair has a nest of books beside it: Bible, journal, pens, concordance and some books by other spiritual writers that encourage me.  It awaits me each morning at 6:30. Sometimes I sit with my coffee in the quiet for a while, other times I am ready to write in my journal. Sometimes I need to check my friends on Facebook when I know they are going through a rough patch. Mostly I need this quiet time with God and no one else. Afterwards, I am ready for the world, ready for work, ready for my day.  I used to be an extrovert, always on the go, always on, always with other people. Now I confess to needing my quiet time with God as much as I need my work time, and my people time! In fact, I enjoy my time with others more because I have had my time with God. I work with more passion and strength because I have had the quiet and the silence to focus my life on what is beautiful and what is true.

My other appointed place to meet God is at my Church. I found a place of worship that centered on God, not a minister or the people. The purpose of our church is to “Connect people to God, to one another, and to the community” around us.  We are a downtown church, so we do a lot of mission work with the poor and we have teams that go abroad also.  We can be taught all the history of the Bible and all the facts of our faith, but if our hands don’t lift to help a neighbor in need, we aren’t living our faith in the light of Christ.

But God in his wisdom finds ways to meet us any place and any time.  God is the master of the unexpected, for when we least expect to see him, he’ll find a way to come to us!  We might be washing dishes or pumping gas into the truck or buying groceries. Unless we are prepared and receptive however, we will most likely miss this moment.  To prepare our hearts and minds for the chance encounters, the practice of sitting still before God is worthwhile. This week set a time aside for a quiet time: make it an appointment in your Day Timer, or iCal or write it on your hand and look at the clock.  Show up in this place and put on the “I’m invisible hat” and just breathe deep for thirty minutes. If you sleep through it, God knows you need that nap! Remember, God can work in you to restore you even when you aren’t working. Maybe to be a light, your battery needs charging.  Spend this week on “being present to God,” and let God be present to you.