I Will Not be Confused

The day dawns as scrambling thoughts spawn. “Nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Yet to my right and to my left confusion adds to an illusion which is not of him, and discernment beckons, “Come tarry with me this early morn.” And so, I do.

“Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? The man with clean hands and pure heart, who desires not worthless things, who has not sworn as to deceive his neighbor” (Psalm 24).

As I pause, I know well a pure heart I do not always have. Clean hands might be not stirring up that which deceives or crucifies once again pounding nails deeper still. And as I still, I see how guilty on all counts I have been at times as I confess the illusion that all is well with my soul.

Born into sin we are. He came and died that hands and hearts would be purified from all unrighteousness. It’s cyclical, you know. Sin, confession, turning back to him, accepting anew what the Almighty did do, will do and is doing. He came because we are imperfect. I need not be.

What is it then that I need do?

“Repent,” says he. “Confess,” says he. “Knock,” says the Holy One, the only one who can “do” and I cannot. Over again the cycle beckons, “Come to me all who labor and are weary, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). And he does.

He gives rest by carrying that which we are not able. The heavy is too weighty a cross to bear. And the truth of the matter is: “He is the potter, we are the clay, the work of his hands” (Is. 64:8). We need merely be pliable in his hands as “we are God’s workmanship” (Eph. 2:10).

Recently, I watched as my grands prepped clay in order to place it onto a potter’s wheel. To ready the clay, they had to “kneed” the dough, so to speak. To get the air bubbles out one must work the clay because if not—once it is tossed into the fiery furnace, it would break and be useless. The potter must do the heavy work of prepping that which will be eventually tried by fire.

The potter doesn’t say, “Oh, clay. You are fine as you are. In fact, I’ll not prep you by ‘burping’ the bubbles out to strengthen you.” He does not say, “You are okay the way you are, and I’m going to just plop the whole brick-like form of you into the kiln. That way, I won’t create any resistance, and you may remain just as you are. After all, that’s the way you arrived in the box, so that must be how you were created to be. You were just made that way.”

The potter does not say, “Even though you are a square chunk of clay, I will still call you cup. We will pretend to drink from you because that is what you want. That’s how you were made—just a lump of clay here to stay.” No, the potter does not say those things.

The potter’s job is to form. And when he forms, he speaks truth, always truth potter speaks.

“I must let you know that when you are tossed into the kiln of fire, you won’t be strengthened because you haven’t been formed. You will crack and break. I will not be able to pour into you nor will you be able to pour out as no purifying process has taken place.”

If we resist, he cannot pour streams of living water back into that which he created. He makes it clear in his word that it is he who created us, not we who created him. Sometimes in the confusion of life the illusion is that we are the potters and not the clay. Although he invites us to come just as we are, a broken people, we must be willing to be formed. Burping the bubbles out in the process is called transformation—a very sacred process. If we do not go through this process, we will remain just as we are, steeped in our brokenness rather than free from it.

It is not in us our hope—but in him our hope. “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay; you are the potter; we are all the work of your hands” (Isaiah 64:8). Amen.

Kathleen Kjolhaug, Theology in the Trenches

Photo: Sister Dennis Frandrup doing pottery.