Reflecting on the Lord’s leading
With the help of this awesomely beautiful short video of a ceramic master at work, this is an invitation to ponder the Lord’s great attention to detail in our lives. For as a master Potter first shapes and then beautifies the pots He is making, so too is the Lord at work refining us!
You can hardly fail to make the association with Jeremiah 18, where the Lord speaks of the Potter shaping and reshaping his pot on the wheel. We are truly the Lord’s beloved, and as the master Potter, He does not hesitate to refine and excise parts of the clay vessel He is shaping, to contain the particular treasures He wishes us to bring to the world. What would the Lord say to you through this video as you watch precision craftsmanship twinned with refined patience?
Fill Thou my life, O Lord my God in ev’ry part with praise
With so many pressing matters personally and internationally to both attract and distract our heart’s attention, it can be really helpful sometimes to focus down on the Lord by reading and pondering the words of tried and tested hymns. Like this one from Horatius Bonar, which must surely rank as one of the greatest of all devotional hymns.
Yes, Lord, with all the many things each one of us has to do, may we not shirk or skimp on making the conscious effort to seek to fill every part of our heart with praise. To mope less and to praise more!
In both Hebrew and Greek the word fill (as in either a container, or a person with the Spirit) can also mean to ‘fulfil’. So when God fills us (with strength, joy, peace or whatever) it is so that we can fulfil what is on His heart, for both His sake and for ours.*
Fill us, Lord, afresh with Your Spirit today, we pray, dear Lord!
Fill Thou My Life, O Lord My God
Fill Thou my life, O Lord my God,
in ev’ry part with praise,
that my whole being may proclaim
Thy being and Thy ways.
Not for the lip of praise alone,
nor e’en the praising heart,
I ask, but for a life made up
of praise in ev’ry part:
Praise in the common things of life,
its goings out and in,
in fellowship enjoyed at home
with my beloved ones,
enduring wrong, reproach, or loss
with sweet and steadfast will,
forgiving freely those who hate,
returning good for ill.
So shalt Thou, Lord, from me, e’en me,
receive the glory due,
and so shall I begin on earth
the song for ever new.
So shall each fear, each fret, each care
be turned into a song,
and ev’ry winding of the way
the echo shall prolong.
So shall no part of day or night
from sacredness be free,
but all my life, in ev’ry step,
be fellowship with Thee.
The patience, the slowness, the attention, the detail. May we be soft in His hands, and beautiful in His house.
I especially loved the second one.
I thought that this was so beautiful. When he put the jar first into the ‘slip’ to glaze it and then so carefully into the kiln, so much hope for good things from so much intense fire that might destroy it all – ‘twas a picture of how God deals with our lives. The sufferings might break us, cause us to go the other way and die, or render such beauty in us that it is to be treasured by Him above all things: It is worth the pain in us of the fire to make us into our final exquisite form. Perhaps, ultimately, this is what death is like?
1 Corinthians 3, v.15
10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. 14 If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.
The potter:
So much intense concentration, absorbed by His craft; His critical eye and obvious pleasure; His focus and determination when moulding the clay on the wheel, the speed of which necessitates firm handling (our times in His hands – do we understand the times we are in?); the varying pressure to achieve the final shape; no mercy when cutting off the excess. The potter is prepared to get His hands dirty in the process. His hands hold us securely throughout.
The process:
Messy – yet vision of the final outcome is the driver and not hindered; attention to detail and the perfect beauty and grace of the finished form. Incisive surgery alone can let the Light shine through; texture – the rough and the smooth; gentleness and intricacy; scraping away the surface to reveal the hidden depths of colour so essential to the overall design; abundance (how often we want to hold on to it!) removed for a refined image; shine – reflecting His glory.
Baptism in the slip; then set aside, “abandoned”, isolated and parched dry. Yet not alone: even when in the Refiner’s fire, prepared and stoked by the very hands which hold us, He is waiting, expectant.
Treasures of darkness – the perfection of what is brought forth.
The constancy of His gaze and attention – nothing is hid from His sight. Whatever He starts, He brings to completion. There is purpose in it all.
2 Cor 4:6ff