Vessels, Clay and Butterflies in the make...

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted a new blog. It’s been a tough last couple of weeks. Besides not being able to get rid of my late bed time habits and going to sleep at 12ish/ 1ish all the time, there are bigger more important things I’ve faced.

I feel like the more I try to be better, the more I fail. It’s like the harder I try to improve certain habits or areas in my character/ persona the more bad and sinful areas I discover about myself. It’s like there’s another rock in the way waiting to see me fall.

In the Bible, Jeremiah got to see a more figurative and symbolic example of this. God tells Jeremiah: “Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words. So he went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do”. (Jeremiah 18:1-4 RSV). I am a broken vessel, and my God I cannot count the times in which I have broken in my potter’s hands. So God is the potter, I am the clay. By the way, this pottery stuff takes a lot of patience to do. I’ve always been the type of person who never liked to get their hands dirty with gunky stuff but hey, this clay is gunky. My life for that matter is gunky. And God don’t mind gunky. And I always ask myself why??? If I was God, I’d choose to never get my hands dirty but I’m not God, He is and he chooses imperfect people.

…(Small tangent) I’m not a Lady Gaga fan but her song “Bad Romance” says: “I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything as long as its free, I want your love blah blah blah….etc.” Ok, what if we think for a minute and realize, isn’t that what God is asking of us; our ugly, our disease, our love?! So many times in relationships people get hurt by their partner, over and over and over but yet they stay together and have patience and people say “man you’re lucky he/she hasn’t dumped you”. Well heads up, God doesn’t dump people , ironically people dump Him out of their life.

So I’ve realized, life is a matter of realizing we are in the potter’s hands. The question is, who is your potter? Who’s molding you? Is it your friends, your job, music, the media, or is it God? And it finally came to me, the part where it states in Jeremiah: “the vessel spoiled in the potters hands”. So even if I willingly want to be in the hands of God, even in his hands I spoil.

If you’re broken, recognize it, but look at it with purpose. Everyone else around is walking around with issues. If you’ve spoiled, recognize it’s best when you spoil in His hands because otherwise you’re just a rotten case.

If you’re waiting for the perfect day when you stop sinning to jump in the potter’s hands keep in mind, he wants your ugly too, its not just Lady Gaga singing it. Give him your gunky life, he will work wonders with it and make you into a beautiful masterpiece. It’s in the ugly stages of our life in which he works best. One of my favorite proverbs (not from the bible) is “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a beautiful butterfly”. Who knew a caterpillar would become a butterfly. But there lies a process: The cocoon. I am in my cocoon, and someday, I know I will be done with that process. In the meantime, just know that God’s promises are true and he is not finished with you.

The picture of the rainbow was a few weeks ago on my way home. In the midst of my hectic day, that reminded me that there’s a rainbow after every storm.

We are vessels, we are clay, and we are butterflies in the make….