The potter's house

 We had just arrived on the mountain for a huddle at camp May Mac, a secluded Santa Cruz Christian camp. Small contingents of my wife’s family, fifty-five in all was just getting out of their cars and were busy hugging and shaking hands. The Santa Cruz Mountains are beautifully placed between the beach town of Santa Cruz and the major metropolitan area of San Jose, California. A gentle westerly was blowing and everything in bloom was sending out fragrances of spring into the air.

The camp staff had just finished preparing a wonderful meal for us to enjoy. A large brass bell was being rung calling us to the dining room to eat as camp workers were busy setting up tables. The staff was all part of a program that helps men and women get off the streets, drugs, alcohol and sexual additions. As I walked through the buffet line each food tray was manned by someone from the program who graciously heaped food onto our plates. It wasn’t the food but their pleasant faces and their smiles that caught my attention.

These were not the expressionless faces of bored, disgruntled employees but the shining faces of joyful bond servants that had been set free from bondage and were truly grateful to be serving us dinner at the camp. They were laboring as unto the Lord and their sincerity and love poured out on us like butterscotch and stuck to all our senses. It was good to see the Lord working in the lives of these young men and women from Teen Challenge and how God had His hands on them actively molding their lives.

The scene made me think how our Lord has put such a great treasure into these plain earthen vessels. It made me consider going down to the potter’s house and watch as he created some of his wares on the wheel. Soon my feet were heading down the hill and within minutes I arrived at the workshop’s white picket fence, unlocked the gate and stepped quietly into the potter’s studio.

In the afternoon sunlight I stood silently and watched the potter clasped his hands around a lump of clay that was spinning on the wheel. He pulled and pushed on it up and down a few times as the clay went round and round the wheel. At the right moment, he put his thumb into the middle of the lump and began forming a hole. Within seconds the hole enlarged and transformed the lump into a beautiful vessel.

Unfortunately, as the lump turned a small imperfection made a large bulge in the wall of the vessel. It looked almost perfect except for the bump that now wobbled. The clay continued to bump and thump each time it went around the wheel as it hit the potter’s knuckle. Soon it weakened and collapsed and the beautiful vessel was now a broken and worthless mass of clay unable to hold anything.

Determined the potter gathered up all the clay and put it back into a ball. Skillfully he applied just the right amount of pressure to the lump re-centering it on the spinning wheel. Now, with the imperfection taken away the lump was allowed to spin free. Soon the wheel stopped turning, and within a few weeks the vessel was fired, glazed and is now holding olive oil in the camp’s kitchen.

In the above illustration, we are the clay, God is the Potter and the wheel represents our lives with all of its challenges, circumstances, trials and tribulations. We all have imperfections that cause our vessels to be out-of-balance. Our vessels are often cracked pots that are unable to hold anything. Its only when we ask God, the Master Potter, to intervene in our lives that He is able to take a broken, marred lump of clay and turn it back into a beautiful solid vessel.

Once we become vitrified, through the intense heat of life’s fire, we are now able to hold oil. The oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. God wants desperately to use us as vessels of honor which are set apart for only His use. His desire for our lives is that we continually ask Him to be re-filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit. 

As I looked at all the friendly faces of the workers serving us food at the camp I realized how they all had at one time been broken, worthless lumps of clay. However, God in His limitless grace and mercy had re-created them into vessels of honor that were being used by the Master Potter to graciously pour out the gospel of eternal life on the people that they were serving.