Squealing with excitement, the girls jumped up from the dining room table. In an instant, probably the most valuable monetary item in our home shattered. The antique teapot, once owned by my great-grandmother and given to me by my Nannie, broke into unrepairable pieces. Mercifully and oddly, considering my disappointment, the Lord enabled me to extend grace to the girls for the clear accident.
On that day, the shattered “earthen vessel,” the common collective term for pottery in the Bible (Leviticus 6:21; Numbers 5:17; Jeremiah 32:14), symbolized the brokenness I experienced spiritually. As I picked up the pieces of the teapot, I spoke to the Lord, “Why does it seem that much I hold dear in this life is shattered, destroyed or taken from me, God?”
Why cry over a teapot? Thankfully, I did not. Although in my thoughts, the crushed teapot represented my crushed heart. I already cried an ocean for the daughter who died so young, for the babies I could not birth, for the pain of abandonment from my earthly father in my youth, for fractured health, for the loss of noble dreams, and more. Why such internal shattering?
Through these difficulties, the Lord Himself did not desire to crush and crack and pound me, but in allowing the afflictions, nothing escaped His watchful eye. As the fallen sin of this world hammered blows at my earthen vessel, God foreknew all. In His sovereignty, He allowed the suffering…the breaking.
Whereas I remained unable to create a beautiful teapot once again from my shattered vessel, the Lord in His infinite wisdom created a new vessel, a new “me,” with shattered pieces.
Only the Potter has the power to shape the worthless clay into something of value. “Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker– An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, `What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, `He has no hands’?” Isaiah 45:9
And the Lord granted me acceptance, that as the Potter, He has planned the finished piece. I may not understand the brokenness or how the shattered pieces will come together, but I do not need to understand because I am not the Potter. I am merely the earthen vessel. My job is to trust by faith, weak and small, that the Potter makes the broken into beautiful.
Moment by Moment in Jesus,
Brooke
Dear Father, Mold me, shape me, transform me into the image of Your Son. Thank You for Your perfect will. I accept by faith the things I do not understand. I trust that You are making the broken and shattered pieces in my life into something beautiful. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Hello! I'm Brooke.
Brooke,
The depth of pains could be indescribable, and yet, your testimony of God’s turning beauty from the brokenness is so apprehensible!
Praise the Lord. His Maker and Perfecter.
He completes our life stories with details that go beyond our understanding…
This is so sweet! I love it. It seems that much of what men or even my own heart tells me is valuable becomes shattered as well, and then I must reassess where my priorities lay. Ouch! That hurts, especially when I find they are in things rather than in the giver of those things…Thanks for this.