Hi everyone- welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God.
It's so good to be back here on the podcast with you. Since the previous episode, I've continued teaching full-time, volunteering at my church and trying to balance in some self-care as well, mostly in the shape of group classes at the Y M C A, like Zumba and weights, plus walking along the beaches of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Our Bible verse today is from Isaiah chapter 64, which is just about in the middle of your Bible. I will be reading from the Inclusive Bible Translation, which is just a little bit different from traditional versions in a good way, I think.
Here is Isaiah Chapter 64 verse eight: “Yet you are our mother and father, Yahweh. We are the clay and you are the potter. We are all the work of your hands.”
Yahweh is another name for God and in this case, God is being addressed as mother and father.
Do you like to play with Play-Doh? I like making shapes with it. These days you can get interesting toy sets for kids like hair salons that you can make Play-Doh hairstyles with. Some people like me, even like how Play-Doh smells. Now you might be wondering, why on earth am I asking about Play-Doh today? Please rest assured that this is not a sponsored episode. I'm not getting anything by mentioning a specific brand. If you're feeling inspired to grab some Play-Doh right now, please go ahead.
The reason I ask is that I wonder if you have ever worked with clay? Is it similar to Play-Doh or different? How easy is it to shape clay? I took a pottery class this past summer and I was surprised at how different clay is from Play-Doh. I like that you can shape Play-Doh easily and get it to do pretty much whatever your talent and gravity allow. I was amazed at how solid a block of clay is and how much strength it took to change the shape of the clay.
Even using water and a pottery wheel, I felt like it was a good workout at the gym trying to turn clay into a bowl or a cup. It sure looks easy when you see someone in the movies shaping clay on a pottery wheel, or even my teacher in the pottery studio. I felt embarrassed at how long it took me to get the hang of it, and even after many tries, I could not create a tall vase, never mind a full size cup.
I was proud of a small bowl and felt kind of worn out by the time I worked it towards being a bowl. I thought it could maybe be a pen holder for my desk, but it's not even really tall enough for that. Maybe for petite pens or pencils, but not full size.
My pottery teacher kept saying, “you show the clay who's boss. The clay has a mind of its own, but you decide how it gets shaped.” That immediately brought to mind a song titled, “Change My Heart, O God” because it includes the phrase, “you are the potter, I am the clay.” Really, it was as if there was a giant light bulb going on over my head in the pottery studio that summer.
I thought to myself, I wonder if God is trying to shape me and I'm resisting just like this clay here that I'm trying to turn into a cup? If you want to have a journal nearby, you could grab yours now because I'm going to be asking a few questions that you might want to journal about.
So that first question: I wonder if God is trying to shape me and am I resisting just like this clay here that I'm trying to turn into a cup? For me, I'd say the answer is yes. I'm probably resisting God trying to shape me, but I don't want to. I want to change that. So I have a few thoughts about that for us.
When I searched for Bible verses about God being the potter, I found nine references in Job, Isaiah Lamentations, Romans, and depending on which translation you use, a couple of other books of the Bible. I'm sure that many theologians over the years have written a great deal about this concept, but today I just wanted to share my experience with you because I wonder how God might be shaping each of us in this season of our lives?
I'm recording this episode on January 2nd, 2023, which is a time of the year when many people come up with New Year's resolutions, and that's absolutely not what this episode is about, but it made me think of a season of maybe thinking about change or considering how my life might be different in this coming year.
So that's why I ask, I wonder how God might be shaping each of us in this season of our lives as well as this season of the year when this episode is first being released. Here are some more questions for consider. How are we cooperating or resisting God's shaping of our lives, both as individuals and as faith communities?
How are we prayerfully listening for God's direction as people, families, and faith communities? Am I too comfortable being a lump of clay, but God's vision is for something different that requires some change in me? Are we comfortable with the way things are now, but God has a new vision for us? Are we willing to change for the better, even if it's uncomfortable during the process?
Let me tell you a bit more about the process involved with turning a piece of raw clay into a finished work and how I connect that with spiritual growth. When I used a piece of fresh clay, it was not required that I knead it like dough for a loaf of bread, but we often reuse clay from leftovers. Why throw it away if you can use it again?
But it required a little bit of additional preparation, and that was to knead it similar maybe to bread dough, but I don't know because I'm not a big bread dough maker. But the point was to get out any little bubbles of air that might be there. So we had to knead it for a few minutes. So that speaks to me about preparation, how my life needs some preparation even before the molding and shaping gets started.
Needless to say, we all liked using fresh clay instead of having to reuse clay, but that wasn't always an option. We need to use the leftovers, and that's absolutely okay, even if it requires a little bit of additional preparation. Even when you place the clay on the wheel, a little bit more preparation is needed before actually starting, no pun intended.
By the way, let me say that even once the clay has been prepared and you place it on the wheel, a little bit more prep work is required to get started before shaping the clay: you have to hold it and center it, and your arms and hands need to be held in a certain position to get the clay to move, to get it to the shape that you have in mind.
So the preparation is not simple, five minutes of kneading or whatever. The preparation work is ongoing as the shaping gets started, and there's not necessarily an easy checklist of, oh, do this for five minutes and do that for a certain period of time or a season in our lives. Sometimes some of the more experienced pottery students said, “Nope, this isn't working.
I am gonna start over.” And they took their clay and they dumped it into the reuse bucket and got some more clay to get started. So the preparation work might need to be ongoing.
So after the shaping, which was a very long process for me. I tried to make a cup three times, and I really wanted a solid size coffee or cocoa cup. Some cultures actually even use bowls, good size bowls for their coffee or their tea. And I know that there's many cultures that use much smaller drinking vessels for maybe espresso or tea. Just much smaller hand size pieces. But I really wanted a substantial cup, sort of a larger size mug, but it never happened, and I'll tell you what did end up happening. Finally, after the third try, I ended up with a small bowl that was really nicely shaped that now has a plant in it. For me it was really a lot of work getting the clay to stay in that round shape and I had to question, do I need this to be perfect?
And I know for a lot of people the answer is probably yes, especially if you're selling it in a store or things like that. But just for myself, the teacher helped me to see I can keep working on this until it's as close to perfect as I can get it, or is it okay if it's not perfect? So one suggestion that she had for me was, it was kind of lopsided a little bit and she said, you know, that looks like it could become a little pitcher maybe for cream or milk if you wanna put that in your coffee or your tea, or it could be a maple syrup pitcher.
And I thought, Hey, yeah, I can do that. That sounds good. So then it was easy to kind of stretch the side of the piece. Until it was a little pitcher, it had a little spout, and it didn't have to be perfectly round, but it was absolutely precious just the way it ended up. Now, do I need to put my maple syrup in a little pitcher before I pour it on my pancakes or french toast? No, of course not, but I thought it was a really nice idea. And I was quite satisfied with the end product. The second imperfect container that ended up becoming a pen holder. Again, I was struggling to get that perfect round shape and it had a few sort of notches or scalloped edges.
So again, the question was for my pen holder, does this have to be absolutely perfect? And I'm actually really glad that I ended up having some kind of smooth scalloped edges and notches cuz I thought, well, if I'm gonna put pens in this, then it's okay if the pens sort of rest within that extra curve. It doesn't have to be perfect and round.
But finally, that third piece ended up being a nice bowl again, not a full size cup, nowhere near a vase, but I was satisfied with it. So the first firing resulted in the clay still being slightly malleable, but definitely drier, not as soggy or floppy as it was in the first place.
And so for the second lesson when I returned, I learned how to create a foot on the piece for stability. And that kind of made me wonder how is my foundation formed, my spiritual foundation, my emotional foundation? Probably nobody is stable a hundred percent of the time, and maybe not every piece of pottery needs to have a foot carved into it.
If you're okay with the bottom being fairly flat and basically stable, that's fine, but I learned how to use a tool to create a foot, not a human foot or an animal foot, but just an extra circle in the bottom of the piece of pottery. It's called a foot, so that it can be stable.
So that's another part of our faith formation, is our foundation. How is that shaped? And it just doesn't come about like magic. It's done intentionally. So maybe with Bible study or with learning from other people, again, being shaped, being formed, it doesn't just appear by itself. So after the foot was created on the piece of pottery, it was fired again.
And I might even be remembering wrong. But this is the way it was in my mind it was fired again. And then at that point we used some sandpaper for the rough edges, because even with the tools, it might still be a little bit sharp, and that reminds me a little bit of pruning that we've definitely talked about on this podcast before.
But the rough edges needed to be sanded off and that wasn't, you know, tons of fun, but that's okay. It was work, it needed to be done. It was actually kind of nice to take the pieces outside and blow the dust into the air. But in terms of spiritual pruning, we don't emerge perfectly formed. We need to learn. And there's so many wonderful lessons from that that, again, I'll let the other episodes speak for themselves, but wanting to just lift that up, that there's always gonna be some fine tuning that needs to happen.
And then once the piece was dipped into the glaze, there's some preparation involved even for that, but I'm not gonna get into all of those details right now, but wanting to just share that once that final firing takes place, I ended up with a couple of pieces that had little drips that weren't really supposed to be there. And some of it's just cosmetic. It looks pretty, but these drips ended up being worse than rough edges. They also needed to be sanded down. And that made me think too, that, you know what, it's okay if we're not all perfect, it's absolutely fine, but maybe that pruning process even needs to continue. But all of these steps that I've been describing for you, the pottery teacher told us that these pieces are really built for endurance.
You can put 'em in the dishwasher, and we all buy pieces of different stoneware, dishware, pottery that you can put in a microwave, that you can put in an oven that are created from clay. And I haven't worked up the nerve yet to do that with any of the pieces that I created, but that they're created for endurance.
And I have another question for us to consider. What happens when a piece of pottery breaks? What happens when a human being feels like they're broken? And I wanted to share an experience that I had with some of my social work students when we learned together and created some pieces of Kintsugi pottery.
And this is something that you may have heard about before. I had the sad experience of some pieces of pottery breaking during some of the international moves that I've experienced in recent years. If you've never seen a piece, I would really encourage you to look this up online, and I'll have some photos on the website again, of the pieces that we created together.
It's a Japanese art of repairing pottery with molten gold as the lacquer in between the broken pieces, or could be any other precious material. Now I don't have access to that, and for the pieces of pottery that broke that I brought into the classroom, we use frankly, glitter glue and sparkly mod podge.
To repair these pieces of Potter. But the moral of the story, sort of with the art of kintsugi that we talked about in my social work class is that the object was not seen as useless anymore. The pottery shards were not thrown into the trash. So even though I can't use my grandmother's teapot anymore to serve tea, I can still keep it and have that glitter glue glued it together again, sort of like kintsugi to remember that this is a sentimental family heirloom for me. And we talked from a social work perspective of does this mean that objects or even human beings who might feel broken, are totally useless? And the answer is no. Do we have to be perfect all the time? No.
Does God expect us to be perfect all the time? No, it's impossible. Maybe does society expect us to be perfect or is there sort of a false sense of beauty and perfection with airbrushing and things like that? Sure, but there's a philosophy called Wabi-sabi that's about embracing imperfection. So how do we decide about ourselves? Am I useless? Is someone else no longer useful or can we still be seen as precious children of God and precious siblings to each other, precious neighbors in our brokenness? How do we break free from that? And there's whole other Bible studies and workshops and podcast episodes about that.
But since I'm talking about the creation of pottery, I also wanted to lift up what happens when either the piece of pottery is broken or when we might feel broken and that God is perfect and endures forever, but God gives us a free gift of love and redemption that we can't earn by being perfect. Now, we do strive to lead good lives? I've talked about that in many other episodes before.
So yes, we strive to serve and to love and to act out God's love, to share God's love with other people, but we're not beating ourselves up for being imperfect because we know that we can't be perfect.
So I hope that makes any kind of sense, and that might leave some room for journaling. How am I prepared? How is my foundation? What rough edges might need some pruning. Are there some drips? Am I imperfect? And is that okay? How do I endure? What happens if I feel broken? Can I be put together in a unique and precious way that can still serve the world even if I'm not the same as I was before? And can I accept God's free gift for myself knowing that I can't earn my own eternal life?
How do we value each other in all of our brokenness? After I searched for Bible verses about Potter and clay, I looked up the song so that I could share the composer with you, and at that point I realized how many songs include a phrase about God being the potter and us being the clay. I had originally thought of the song “Change My Heart, o God” by Eddie Espinosa.
But soon I saw one of my favorite songs that I'd like to read some of the verses to you. Now, you can think of it as a prayer, although we will have an original prayer written and read by Stephanie Hittle afterwards, followed by a sung version of the Lord's Prayer, sung by Eric Haitz. The lyrics I'm going to read now were written by Adelaide Pollard. And the music was composed by George Stebbins. If you wanna think of this as a prayer, let me invite you into a space of prayer.
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Wounded and weary, help me, I pray!
Power, all power, surely is Thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine.
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Hold o'er my being absolute sway!
Fill with Thy Spirit till all shall see
Christ only, always, living in me.
Amen.
So my parting thoughts and hopes for us today are that we can consider how are we being molded? How do we discern God's vision for us? That's something that's, we've also talked about in previous episodes. I don't have all the answers to that. I would again recommend the Bible study that's titled “Discerning The Voice of God” by Priscilla Shirer. And part of that, I mean, I don't recall that there were any examples of pottery in that, but part of it is just prayerfully seeking God's will in our lives and looking at maybe some of the different signs along the way in our lives, how do I know what God has in mind for me?
And am I willing to just move forward as things are now and wait and see what happens? Maybe we stay lumps of clay forever, and that's okay too. There's all kinds of different ways of beauty. I don't have to stay the way I am permanently, even though I might want that in my life. I might not be too excited about change, but change is part of life and how can I be okay with that?
So that's what I have for us for today. We do have a closing prayer and a closing Lord's prayer coming up. Blessings on your day or your evening and your season. Thank you.
2 Corinthians 4:7-9 “We are like common clay jars that carry this glorious treasure within so that the extraordinary overflow of power will be seen as God's not ours. Though we experience every kind of pressure, we're not crushed. At times we don't know what to do, but quitting is not an option. We are persecuted by others, but God has not forsaken. We may be knocked down, but not out.” (The Passion Translation)
Heavenly Father, as we endure uncomfortable shifts in our lives, help us to understand and realize that there is a greater purpose through the discomforts. We know the pressures of our trials create beauty from your hands.
You are the perfect potter in our lives. You take what has been broken apart and turn it into a new masterpiece. With the fingerprints of your grace and the grip of your glory, we can be restful and assured. You are taking what is no longer meant for us and transforming it into what is May we know that as we walk through the burning furnace, you are walking along our side protecting us from what is unseen to our human ability; and that your Holy Spirit is guiding us to our renewed purification.
May you remind us when our spirits feel weak and unsettled, that you are our potter. And as our potter, we are in your hands as you turn our debris into treasures. Thank you for being our artist, our guide, and our devine Father. Thank you for using what is meant to be against us and using it for the blessings upon ourselves and others.
In Jesus' name we praise you. Amen.
Prayer by Stephanie Hittle