Beautiful Cracked Pots

In June, the Country Woods Women’s Ministry met at the Athannasov’s home to be taught how to create, with our own hands, a serving bowl made from clay. I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to go because you see, I’m not very creative.  My husband and my oldest daughter are the right brain people in our household.  I’m very left brain.  I like structure, sequence, and details.  Learning to make a bowl out of clay requires thinking outside the box.  What in the world can I create when all I see is a clump of clay?  I tried.  I was instructed by a fabulous teacher.  My goal was to create the most beautiful, unique, serving bowl there ever was to create…but I’m no Gail Pittman!

My bowl is unique alright. It is lopsided; it is cracked; it is bumpy, and it even has a small hairline fracture in the very bottom.  Let’s just say it won’t hold water for long.  The more I look at my one of a kind creation the more I think about this verse, “Yet LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our Potter; we are all the work of your hands.” Isaiah 64:8

When I first received my bowl after it had been put in the kiln and glazed, I laughed at my lopsided bowl, but my encouraging six-year-old assured me my bowl was beautiful!

You know I often feel like that lopsided bowl.  I am not perfect; I have cracks; I have hairline fractures that make me fragile.  But God my Father thinks I’m beautiful.  He created me! I’m special to Him! As I continued to look at my bowl creation I thought about the fact that no matter how my bowl looks it is still usable; it may not hold water but it will hold some food.  It may be rough and bumpy but it’s also shiny. It may be lopsided, but it will still sit steady on the table.  You see it doesn’t matter what the bowl looks like; what matters is what the bowl was created to do.

I placed the bowl beside a decorative cross that I had in my den.  The more I looked at my lopsided, cracked bowl; and the more I looked at the decorative cross beside it, the more I thought about this…IN LIGHT OF THE CROSS, WE ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL! Because of the cross of Christ, God can use us even though we are cracked or even broken. Because of the cross of Christ, we can still stand steady even if we’re lopsided; because of the cross of Christ, we can shine for Him even if we’re rough and bumpy.

The thing is I can’t go back and remake the same bowl.  As a potter there is no way to create an exact replica of my bowl.  In the same way, there is not another replica of YOU! Your Father the Potter formed you and shaped you to be and to do what only you can do.  He doesn’t expect you to look like everyone else; He doesn’t expect you to do and say what everyone else does and says.  He doesn’t expect you to be perfect.

Just like I will proudly display and use my unique lopsided, cracked, fragile serving bowl; the Potter is calling us to live in the light of the cross as His beautiful cracked pot!