It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted. Funny how vacation gets me into more of a creative place. For the trip down, I added a bunch of Caedmon’s Call tunes to my travel playlist. Caedmon’s is my favorite band of all time and several of the songs on the playlist have hit me in a new way this week. In fact, the next few posts will be centered around lessons from these songs.
Jar of Clay is the first. It’s an old one (and, in my opinion, from their best songwriting period). I’ve been noticing lately how much about my life is hard… unwilling to be softened by my Creator God. It’s not how I want to be, but for some reason the hard shell has gone back up again. When I left home for vacation this week, I was seeking some softening.
(If you are reading this in an email, you can listen to the song here: Jar of Clay.)
Here is the line from Jar of Clay that really got me:
My ability won’t get me very far, but my fragility is a testimony of who You are.
God calls us to be jars of clay, able to be softened as he mold us. He doesn’t want us to try to do life in our own strength, hardened to what adjustment He might need to make along the way. He wants us to allow His hands to mold every part, to shape us into the person He wants us to become. Fragility. That fragility is what He takes control of and creates the very best of who we could every hope to become. When we rely on our own ability, we will always come up short.
Always.
So when you come to God to worship, are you hardened… relying on your own ability? Or do you come to Him as one who is soft and ready to be shaped? My prayer is that we will all allow our hard shells to crack, to fall away, so that God can take hold of what’s inside and shape it into what He desires. When we allow our fragility to be taken over by His unlimited ability, it gives testimony of who He is… and that’s why we’re on this earth anyway.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. – 2 Corinthians 4:7-11
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