Reminders on Clay

I was reminded last night about one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Isaiah 64:8 "But Now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the caly and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand."
I can relate to this verse. While in school my Senior year I took ceramics and learned just what it was like to mmold clay. It's not as easy as it looks.
Maybe that it why Isaiah used this illustration not once, not twice, but three times in his book. Jeremiah also used the illustration of the potter in his book after the Lord sent into the Potter's house.
We are like clay. First of all we were made from the dust of the ground. We were nothing until God found us. He shoveled us out of our dirty living and placed in a special container and took us back to his shop where he started his perfect way with us.
Of course we complained right from the very beginning. As soon as he put us into the mixer and started to add the ingredience to make us better for working with we complained. And yet all he was doing was getting us wet so that we could be molded and worked to the way he wanted us.
Of course after we got out of the mixer we were feeling pretty good with ourselves. We had made it through the watering system and now we were big and stronger then ever and ready to take on the world until God took us and what was he doing! He started to Knead us squishing out all the excess water and making us just right. But that hurts!
Ah But soon we forget the discomfort as the trials of being shaped come our way. We cry out to God telling him that we don't want to go through these trials. We become bitter. We struggle with the Potters hands as he tries to shape us. We become the marred vessel of Jeremiah 18 and once again we have to be kneaded once again to bring us back to where we are supposed to be.
Over and over we do this and the patient potter continues to work with us. Some of us struggle so hard that the Potter can do nothing more than put us back into the mixer or throw us away, but some of us begin to recognize that the pain we go through helps to shape our lives for our good and his glory.
Ah as Jeremiah says "Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand."
We are shaped to the way God wants us to be shaped. Some of us are large vessels and pots standing out among the crowd and serving God in a big way. Others of us are small, being used for the simple things of life. But all of that doesn't really matter. It's when we have been willing to let go and be clay and not try to be the potter that God's perfect work is done in us.