I'll Gladly Be Clay

It feels almost wrong to be sitting in my room.  I have the soundtrack of a movie playing, with Christmas lights lining my window (I have a mild obsession with those...), an air conditioner, sheets free of the dust of the day, and I am not surrounded by nine girls, anxious to know what the next day at camp has in store for them.  

I just spent a phenomenal few days at church camp as a counselor, and I have to admit that the last day felt almost more bitter than sweet.  Saying goodbye to some of those kids is just so sad sometimes.  One little girl even came up to me crying, telling me that she didn't want to wait another year before she saw me again.  Now, I'm not normally one to cry over those kinds of things, but that little girl got to me.  I mean, there's just something about knowing that the girls had trusted me the way they did that makes me almost worried about not living up to their expectations.  I mean, I was the one that they came to when they scraped their knees, lost a shoe, got their feelings hurt, or just had a story that they wanted desperately to tell.  I am still in awe--not only of the growth that I saw in the lives of the girls, but of the things I was taught while there.

We are the clay.  That's how Jeremiah 18:6 puts it anyway:

"O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel."

Clay, bluntly put, is mud.  I won't lie--when I first read this passage, I didn't exactly get all joyful.  It kind of hurts to be called mud.  I mean, who wants to be called wet dirt?
Then I talked to another counselor from the camp.  He said, "It's amazing to me, because he tells us that we are in His hand.  Like, no matter what, we're there, and He has total control over the situation."
With a new view, the verse reads so much more than a derogatory statement towards humankind.   God is telling Israel (a nation who turned from Him several times) that He will still care for them, as long as they will remain clay.

The clay has to remain moist for the potter to mold it.  It has to remain saturated.  In the same way, in order for the Lord to mold us, we have to remain saturated in Him.  With worship, fellowship, prayer, and vigilant studying of the Word.  It's got to be more than just a one time dose, though--we have to remain in His light.
The clay analogy goes even a little further.  The potter sometimes has to tear the clay and then place the two pieces back together in order to shape it how He wants it shaped.  It might hurt, but He doesn't leave the clay as divided lumps of mush.  He continues to take care of us.  God doesn't promise that it will be easy, but He promises that He will be there.  He draws the same picture when Jesus discusses the vine and the branches:

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.³ You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you."

John 15:1-3

When allow Him to be the Potter, we allow Him to be in control.  Being the clay doesn't sound quite so bad anymore.