Re-shape

When my kids were young, I attended MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) meetings. At one particular gathering the speaker happened to be a potter, so while she gave her talk, she demonstrated using her potters wheel to create a beautiful vase. 

She quietly instructed and spun the wheel effortlessly as she added last touches to an exquisite vessel. 

Then SMASH! 

Her audience cringed simultaneously—gasping in disbelief. The lovely creation? Now non-existent, replaced by a flattened mound of clay. 

The potter’s topic was based on Jeremiah’s words , “Like clay in the hands of the Potter, so I am in yours.” As a reminder, I preserved a paper banner, and concluded God had smashed me— crushed and reduced to a pile of rubble—in my eyes, no longer useful. 

And the worst part? God had every right to do it! How could He?

As I reflect, I now see it in a different light. 

Sometimes, the only way an artist is able to form the vessel she intends, is to smash the existing and start over, making a new one—more beautiful than the previous. 

Our lives take the same turn— being reshaped, remolded, re-created, into something new. And God, The Potter, continues to transform and refine until we are perfected—everyday more Christlike. 

Whatever stage of God’s transformative process you’re in right now, remember there’s refinement and sanctification in the promise. 

He doesn’t crush us to leave us as an unuseable waste of clay. He’s refines us into his best—beauty from ashes—He makes all things new. 

Will you trust Him to re-shape you?

Photo courtesy of Swapnll Dwivedi, upsplash