Happy Monday. I am a “work in progress,” and so is each and every one of us. The only alternatives are stagnation or death.
I was thinking along this line last week on garbage day. Every Thursday morning in my neighborhood, we place our trash on the curb. Later that day, it is picked up by the garbage truck and taken to the dump. There is no further use for it. However, there are blue bags we put out on the same day, and they are picked up at a different time. These are the recyclables, and they are destined for various places where they are sorted. They will be made over into something useful again. We are encouraged by our county and city to recycle the recyclables and make less waste. There is even a push to buy and use things that have been made from discarded things.
I am so glad that God recycles! In Jeremiah 18, Jeremiah told of going to the potter’s house only to find a vessel that was marred and no longer useful. However, the good news was that the potter started again, and the clay became a vessel that …seemed good to the potter…
Isaiah addressed God in Isaiah 64:8, …we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. As the late Ethel Waters said, “God don’t make no junk.”
Maybe you have felt like junk or, at the least, marred and useless. Take heart! Our Potter wants to make us over into something useful. Now, this is the ultimate “makeover!” People may put us on the “trash heap,” but our Heavenly Father never does. Aren’t you glad? I need a reminder often—perhaps you do as well—of how God always, always, always has a use for us, no matter our state!
“Christ is building His kingdom with earth’s broken things. Men want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken, in building their kingdoms; but God is the God of the unsuccessful, of those who have failed. Heaven is filling with earth’s broken lives, and there is no bruised reed that Christ cannot take and restore to glorious blessedness and beauty. He can take the life crushed by pain or sorrow and make it into a harp whose music shall be all praise. He can lift earth’s saddest failure up to heaven’s glory.” – J. R. Miller
All our Potter wants is for us to remember that we are just clay; He can do as He pleases. Best of all, it will always be only good!
by Beverly Hyles
From the Mondays with Beverly blog. Reprinted with permission.
