slow to mold
Sometimes I'm slow to catch on to important things. For example, two weeks ago I decided that I would watch my first episode of 30Rock. This show has been on for six years and I'm just now smitten. I don't own any Adele but I saw a clip of her singing at the Grammy's and I thought, "Why haven't I been listening to her?" Worse, I cannot seem to make it through a U2 or Coldplay album and that seems to make me a failure in my generation.
I have not read The Hunger Games or Harry Potter. I never saw any Twilight movies beyond the first one. I recycled the wrong items through my curbside pick-up for years. I don't know how to put my front tire back on my bike after dismantling it for transport. Now I can't ride it because the brakes are blatantly untrustworthy. I have not watched KONY 2012 but now I really don't want to since the poor Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell had a mental breakdown. I thought for years that the weatherman was saying the "windshield" was -10, not the wind chill. My mother called Tomato Soup by another name so that I would partake as a child. I was 16 when I realized that "Pink Soup" did not exist outside our home.
I was also one of the few remaining folks to realize that you can find absolutely anything on YouTube. For a long time I thought YouTube was just for America's Funniest Home Video rejects and music videos. But then I heard my friends talk about learning to use a straightener to curl their hair and my friend Joyce suggested I learn Swahili from Kulmansam. (He's a really great teacher. He even uses songs!) I became a late-bloomer in YouTube support.
Today I was was doing some thinking about this season and how I feel slow to catch on to what God is doing. I was reminded of the image of a Potter God forming a lump of clay into something beautiful. There are lots of passages of Scripture that use this metaphor, some intimidating while others are hopeful.
Isaiah 64:8
Yet you, LORD, are our Father.We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “You did not make me”? Can the pot say to thepotter, “You know nothing”?
But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
Romans 9: 20-21
Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn't talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, "Why did you shape me like this?" Isn't it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans?
As I began to really think about molding and potter's wheels, I needed a visual. So I went to my new friend, YouTube.
And I became obsessed with this potter from the UK and lost a good 60 minutes of my day. Maybe more. I lost track of time. Especially when I saw this one:
Watching these videos made me realize a few things I've been slow to catch on to: I may feel like things have been spinning out of control, but that's not reality. The truth is that there is an Artist with a plan for this lump of clay. He works gently or fiercely, depending on what is needed. He is patient and devoted, creative and skilled. The end piece will definitely serve a good purpose; however, the art of its molding is just as beautiful.
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