The Clay Doesn't Decide

One of the things on my mind as I began writing this little blog was my desire to be the person that God created me to be. This is nothing new to my heart, but at seventy years of age it seems I should be a lot closer to that goal by now.

If you are a Christian, you can probably relate. You may look at your life and evaluate your accomplishments and your missed opportunities and hope that you have made a difference for someone along the way.

Most likely you want to be a helper and an encourager to your family, your friends, and the people that you meet on your journey. And if you are anything like me, you wonder if you have spent too much energy on yourself and too little on others. It is easy to question your motives and also question your effectiveness.

Wait! We keep forgetting, don't we? We give lip service to the fact that that HE is the Potter and we are the clay, but do we really understand that our job is to yield to Him while He makes us into the kind of vessel He wants us to be? In His hands, we are molded and shaped and fired and used for His purpose in the time and place of His choosing. So the question isn't so much what have you and I accomplished, but how much yielding have we done? How often have we stopped struggling to be who WE think He wants us to be? In His hands, we are being used whether we know it or not.

Let me give you an example. This one blew me away. It really did. A couple of weeks ago, I went into my Mom's Church and took a seat near the front. We were a few minutes early. All of a sudden a woman that I had never met came over and said, "I am so glad to see you. You are Ruth's daughter, aren't you?" How did she know who I was? That remains a mystery. The woman told me that she reads my blogs and told me they are helpful to her. Really? I had no idea. How did she even find the blogs? To my knowledge, that Church doesn't know about them. Maybe she did a search or maybe someone passed the site along. That remains a mystery, too.

Later on, we found out this lady is facing serious surgery. I am so happy to have met her and to have been given the opportunity to talk with her. It was a joyful thing to share a blessing that God gave me a few years ago. It is an honor even now to pray for her. What an awesome GOD we serve. He orders circumstances and He does things with us and through us to help others -- and He even does that without our knowledge. What a wondrous thing it is to be in the Potter's hands and to be involved in  what He is doing!

If we are Christians, the LORD has given us gifts, placed us where He wants us, and is using us to bless one another and to bring glory to Him. . . "God has so composed the body. . . that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together." (From I Corinthians 12)