Jars of Clay

With warmer temperatures outside and budding flowers and plants everywhere, new life soars through your body. You feel like opening the windows (unless you have horrible allergies like me) and letting in the fresh air. You feel like opening closet doors and purging the closets of their contents. You get bitten by the spring cleaning bug. If you’re a little like me, the bug may have bitten you, but you find a quick remedy for that…hydrocortisone cream!

You may want to do your spring cleaning and purging but when it comes down to it, you just do not have the motivation you need to actually accomplish the tasks that come with springtime. Maybe life has been too stressful lately to even think about it. Maybe you’re just not super excited about cleaning house. Admit it, we’re not all like Hazel. Some of us need a serious motivator to get us going. The same holds true for spiritual spring cleaning and growth.

In the spring, I love to see the new plants budding outside in the clay pots that rest on our deck rail. My husband plants spices and peppers and various other things in the spring every year in these pots. It is fun to watch the plants grow. As they grow bigger, they often need a new pot to call home because there is no room for them to expand as they need to.

Those clay pots deserve some examination.

In 2 Corinthians 4, jars of clay are mentioned. It says that our treasure (the knowledge of God’s glory) is in these jars of clay. Basically, we are the jars and we hold the treasure inside of us. And like a piece of pottery on the potter’s wheel, sometimes we are hard-pressed and worked over to turn us into exactly the piece of art that God wants us to be. During this time, we’re not destroyed. We’re not abandoned. We’re not in despair. The process can be grueling though and seem to take forever. Not to mention the time in the kiln…

I think we’re a little like the plants but we’re a lot like the pots. God molds us and shapes us into exactly the type of pot He needs us to be so that we can handle whatever task it is that He puts before us. Homeschooling, parenting, being a spouse, church ministry, and more cannot be accomplished in the way it should be if we have not let the Master Potter craft us into the pot He wants.

This time of year is a good time to stop and examine your walk with the Lord and to see if He’s ready to shape you into a different type of pot. Some pots hold plants and some pots hold oils. The good thing about being a jar of clay for the Lord is that He’s never really quite finished with us. He’s always changing us. He’s giving us bigger plants to hold or more oils and He equips us for that task. And we have a whole growing and harvest season to accomplish those duties, which is exciting – just like spring.

And when winter comes, the winter season of our spiritual growth, we settle into being the pot that we are at that time. But we have the hopes that come springtime, God will shape us into a new pot and give us a much bigger job to do.
2 Corinthians 4:6-18 (New International Version, ©2011)

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.”Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Sherri Johnson is a homeschool mom (14 years) who is a published author and speaker and who loves to share God with others and to make people laugh. She enjoys speaking to homeschool groups about organization, record keeping, homeschooling high school, keeping kids pure, and more. She has been married for 22 years and has a 20 year old daughter and a 16 year old son. She is a writer who writes homeschool resources and Bible Studies but loves writing Christian Romance more than anything. She has a contract on her first novel, which will be out soon. www.sherrijohnsonministries.com
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