| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 4 |
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Jeremiah tells us of visiting a potter’s house, and watching the potter as he wrought on the wheels. His work was marred in his hands in some way. But instead of throwing it away, he made it into another vessel. The second vessel was not so beautiful as the one the potter first intended to make, but it was useful. The clay had a second chance.
The prophet’s parable had its first meaning for his own people, but its lesson is for all time. For one thing, it tells us that God has a plan for every life. The potter has a pattern after which he intends to fashion his vessel. For every human life there is a divine pattern, something which God means it to become. This first thought of God for our lives is the very best thing possible for them.
We learn, again, from this ancient acted parable that our lives may be marred in the living, so that they shall never attain God’s beautiful thought for them. There is a difference, however, between a lump of clay and a human life. The marring of the clay may be the potter’s fault, or it may be the result of an accident; at least, it cannot be the fault of the clay itself. If a misshapen jar or bowl comes into your hands, you would not say, “what a careless piece of clay it was that made itself into this irregular form!” Rather you would say, “What a careless potter it was that spoiled this vessel, when he had the soft clay in his hands!” But when a life is marred, and fails of the beauty and nobleness which it was designed to have, you can not blame God. You cannot say, “I was clay on the wheel, and the great Potter gave the wrong touch, and spoiled the loveliness that ought to have been wrought in my life.” You are not clay, but a human soul. You have a will, and God does not shape you as the potter moulds his plastic clay. He works through your own will, and you can resist him, and can defeat his purpose for your life, and spoil the noble design into which he would fashion you. The blotches in this fair world are all the sad work of human hands, never of God’s hands.
But this is not all of the lesson. The potter took the clay again when the vessel he meant to make was marred, and with it made another vessel. The second could not be so fine nor so large as the first would have been but for the marring. Yet it was better that there should be an inferior vessel made than that the clay should be thrown away. It is thus that God deals with human souls. He does not cast off the life that has failed of its first and best possibilities. Even in the ruins of a soul there are divine elements, and so long as a little fragment remains God wants to give it still another chance.
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