Pottery on the Wall

Sometimes, do you ever feel like you're just stuck on the wall? Laura and I were privileged to take the OC Pac Rim faculty sponsors to Nikko for a short getaway several weeks ago. It was good to just get out of town for the weekend and spend time getting to know them. On the way up to Nikko we stopped by a little pottery town called Mashiko. You can get all kinds of pottery in all shapes and sizes and prices. In the main parking area for the pottery shops was this fountain decorated with various kinds of pottery. Even though it's pretty cool, they aren't excactly serving the purpose in which they were intended for. It reminded me a little of being in Africa and seeing broken glass and pottery cemented on the very tops of the walls to discourage theives from climbing over the tops. These different uses of pottery got me thinking about this passage in the Bible: "But now, O Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand." (IS. 64:8)

In our own lives, do we just want to sit there and look pretty with all the beauty that God has blessed us with or do we just put up broken fragments of who we are because we're to afraid to let people get close to us? Either way, like these beautiful plates, bowls, and vases or the broken shards of pottery in Africa, how often are we being used by the potter for the purpose for which He created us?

I know this is a heavy topic, but lately I've felt like a I'm a spectacle that's on display, and at the same time I also feel broken. Broken, not in the sense that I'm shattered and trying to keep people away. But, broken because God has a plan and a purpose for me and I've been stuck on a wall trying to keep Him out of my heart. I've been trying to do things that, even though they are useful and effective, are not what the Potter originally intended for me to do. God has a plan and a purpose for all of us even though we often don't realize it until we're stuck on the wall someplace doing something that we weren't created for. Always follow your destiny.

-- Rusty