The Potter and the Clay

“Yet, O Lord, you are our Father.

We are the clay, you are the potter;

We are all the work of your hand.”

~Isaiah 64:8 (NIV).

We for this time are God’s instruments of praise, thanksgiving and holy delight—if we’ll simply trust and obey. After all, what clay speaks back to the potter? What creation argues with its creator?

Yet, it is with us—all of us—and God in his love for us let’s us.

As I drove down the main street of the little city I work in recently, marvelling at the century-old architecture, I thought, ‘One day I’ll no longer be here—but this shall all remain, beyond me.’

Created, inanimate objects and buildings remaining long after us; that’s our reality. And if that doesn’t speak volumes to us about the very existence of God, I’m not sure what will... a man hung on a cross nearly two thousand years ago... a man who died and then apparently rose again on the third day, before ascending in full view of hundreds into heaven? Hardly.

The evidence for a created world with a Creator standing behind it is compelling. Big Bang machines, science or not, we must come to a point in all our so-called rationality where we approach life as inexplicable.

And the fact is science will be forever confounded, stupefied in its hunched, ungainly posture, finding any last little skerrick to explain it. Persistence normally pays, but not with this game—not ultimately.

The scientist will rationalise everything—but they’ll never rationalise life.

If God had ever purposed us to know everything he would’ve made it attainable by now. But, this is the point. Life is lived adequately, properly and appropriately by faith—a life accepting much is never truly known; a life of belief in “good” beyond our knowledgeable foresight. It’s never been any other way and never will be.

We must accept, we are the work of his hands, made and formed for works according to his purposes, not our own (Ephesians 2:10). In this, and this alone, we’re blessed.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.