and You our potter;
of Your hand.
When I was walking through one of the most difficult seasons of my life, God showed me a powerful picture. I’m not really a “vision” kind of girl. So at first, I thought it was just my imagination. But then I felt an impression on my heart that this really was from God.
What I saw inside my mind was a beautiful flower made from paper-thin glass. Then I saw a hand reaching out and wrapping itself around the glass flower. But as the hand closed around it, the glass shattered. It was delicately beautiful but too fragile to be worked with.
Next I saw the same flower formed out of shiny metal. Once again the hand closed around it - only this time, it didn’t change in any way. The steel was strong but not moldable. The metal flower was too hard to give way to the hand’s desired working.
The last time I saw the same flower, it was made from white clay. Every detail was the same, except now when the hand closed around it, the flower squeezed and moved. The hand folded, twisted, and worked with the clay until suddenly an even more beautiful flower emerged.
I asked God about the glass flower and the metal flower. They were beautiful - but not as beautiful as the white clay flower He molded.
I felt as if the Lord said to my heart: Lysa, I want you to be delicate, but I don’t want you to be fragile. If you’re like glass, when I try to make you into something new, you’ll just shatter. I also want you to be strong, but I don’t want you to be unmoldable. You see, Lysa, that steel flower will always just be a steel flower. And no matter how hard My hand presses on it, the metal stays hard. But if you surrender to My shaping, I can do a new and beautiful work in you.
The images I had seen were beginning to make sense. He wanted me to be like clay.
The white clay flower was delicate but not too fragile. The white clay flower was strong enough to hold its shape but soft enough to allow the hand to reshape it as needed. And in the end, the clay flower wound up being the most beautiful of them all.
I cried. I finally felt like I could understand a bit of God’s perspective.
It gave a whole new meaning to one of my favorite verses, Isaiah 64:8: “Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
Oh, friend, God isn’t ever going to forsake us, but He will go to great lengths to remake us.
We must keep our hearts open to what He wants to do in us. Instead of holding too tightly to our own opinions and desires, we must allow His Word to challenge us. Instead of walking our own path, we must allow Him to lead us. Instead of resisting Him when our story takes turns we never would have chosen, we must allow Him to comfort us.
Yes, we must stay moldable. If we’re too fragile, the fear of being broken, crushed, and hurt again will make us want to fight the process. If we’re too rigid, those sharp and strong edges may feel like they protect us, but in reality, they just prevent us from experiencing the transformative work of God. It’s only in trusting the gentle but powerful hands of the Potter, allowing Him to remold and remake us, that those hurts can be shaped into something beautiful.
He wants me to be clay, to be firm but still formed into whatever purpose He has for me. He wants that for you, too, my friend. We don’t have to be afraid of how He’s going to shape our lives. He is the God who somehow makes everything beautiful in its time.
- Lysa TerKeurst
Provided by "Proverbs 31 Ministries"
