jars of clay

Opening Prayer:

Dear Potter,

The lump of clay that I am

keeps crying for some form

day by day

I yearn for you to mold me.

This is a trust-song, Lord

I am in your hands like clay

I am ready to be transformed:

I expect

     to be molded

I expect

     to be beautiful

I expect

     to be loved.

And if by chance

someone should drop me

as your apprentices sometimes do,

I expect

     to be hurt.

I’m just trying to say

I have surrendered

     to your dream for me

I am in your hands

     like clay. 

—Seasons of Your Heart by Macrina Wiederkehr

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:6-7

Journal: How aware are you of the treasure that lies within you?  How does that humble you?  How does it make you grateful?  

Reflection: The older I get, the more appropriate the words “treasure in jars of clay” have become, and I don’t just mean physically.  Oh sure, my body is indeed getting older and “wasting away” little by little, but what I am talking about is more on the inside.  Seeing the all-surpassing beauty of this priceless treasure sheds light on everything that is around it, and shows it all for what it really is.  I am amazed at how much angst and anxiety and fear and insecurity still dwells in my heart.  I thought by now I would have been past all of that.  But it seems that the older I get the more pronounced it has become, or the more noticeable, it is hard to say which.  

     Either way, it ends me up in the same place—both humble and grateful.  Humble at what a flawed and imperfect container I am, and grateful that God would somehow see fit to place himself within me.  As Evelyn Underhill once put it, I am “a created dwelling place or sanctuary of the uncreated and invisible Divine Life.”  Simply amazing.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Thank you, O God, that you have deposited the treasure of yourself in this old, broken jar of clay.