Westside Church of Christ

Welcome to God’s pottery shop. We look around at clay in various stages of development. Some are just lumps with no definition. Others have begun to look somewhat like a bowl or a pitcher if we envision the finished product (We can’t!). Some are clearly nearer to completion. All are works of the master potter. It takes time and applied pressure to turn them into the products of the skilled craftsman. He is the potter at work.

The vision is in the mind of the potter. He sees a bright, shiny work of beauty from what appears to be a ball of mud. It’s hard to imagine anything noteworthy coming from such a common beginning. It’s a righteous man swimming upstream in a current of wickedness. No one noticed that man. Well, almost no one. God did. He plucked him up, made a master shipbuilder out of him and a fistful of relatives were saved from a flood. Divine fingers can do amazing things with someone like Noah.

There was the guy whose life had been one of extremes. He grew up privileged until he saw one of his kin folks being picked on. He stepped in and put a serious whipping on the bully that resulted in a homicide and forty years on the run. He tended the flocks until the shrubbery talked to him. God saw something in that man and had a job for him. He resisted, ducked and dodged. The Lord did not give him up and an entire nation was delivered through his aged leadership.

The potter knows the potential of the clay in His hands, even of an eighty-year-old like Moses. Gideon is at the other end of the spectrum. He was the youngest of an insignificant family. He felt like God had abandoned Israel. He had heard about all of the great exploits in history but had seen none. Life had been miserable for seven years under Midianite oppression, and he was downhearted. There was a great need for a deliverer, but who? The Lord could see what this young man could not. Within him was a great warrior that could lead the way. It took a bit of convincing, but the Lord is good at that. He is one great potter, even with the youthful.

Saul was a violent enemy of the early church. He cheered the stone throwers at Stephen’s execution. He stirred up a persecution in Jerusalem that was so fierce that every Christian but the apostles fled the city. He was a terror…until. The master potter knocked him down on a persecution tour headed for Damascus. Inside that hateful man was a fiery evangelist who’s still turning souls toward Jesus. Pottery can be a rough business.

The young. The old. The unwilling. The opposition. They’re all in the pottery shop. The hands of God working common clay into sacred vessels, and that includes you and me. Praise the potter.