Handles

You've heard it said that He is the Potter and you are the clay and that God had a form, a structure, a purpose in mind as He created precisely you.

It's kind of nice.

But have you considered the way you were created?  Consider Isaiah 45:9.  Many translations have the clay asking the Potter, "What are you making?"  I'm currently reading the God's Word translation, however, which phrases the verse this way:

Does the clay ask the one who shapes it, 'What are you making?'  Does your work say to you, 'There are no handles'?

God created you without handles.  Think about that.

Think about that when you feel like He's just dragging you around this life.  A lot of us feel that way, don't we?  We've given ourselves over completely to this thing we call "God's will" and resigned ourselves to doing the things He forces us to do as He drags us from one place to another, from one circumstance to another, from one problem to another and it doesn't feel like we have a lot of say in it and it doesn't feel like He's much of a divine maker.  Is this our purpose?  To be dragged around?  

Not without handles.

Think about it when you are kind of aching for God to guide you.  We have those times, too.  I know I do.  There are days I wish God would take me by the hand and lead me straight into whatever He has for me, whatever will answer my questions, whatever I'm aching to understand.  I wish He would just grab me and take me on a tour of His divine master plan so that I could see it, so that I could get it.  But He doesn't do that, either.  Not most days.  He can't.

Not without handles.

Think about it when you feel like you're just sitting around, wasting away, taking up space.  We know those times, too.  Times when it feels like we don't know what we're doing, why we were created, why we are even here.  We don't know what we were formed for, and it doesn't seem we're ever going to find it because it doesn't feel like we're moving.  It doesn't feel like we're going anywhere.  We're just stuck.  As we ought to be, we think.  How can a man be moved...

without handles?

We spend so much of our time wanting handles for any number of reasons.  We have to have them, we say, to be used, to be moved, to be led.  But it is by God's beautiful creation that He didn't give us any.

You have been formed with the greatest of care, with every intricate detail painstakingly agonized over by the Potter.  Another verse tells us that if it wasn't going well, God clumped you back together to form you again until He had you just right.  You are fearfully and wonderfully made...without handles.  Because the God who created you was thinking ahead.

Whenever He wants to move you or use you, He also must hold you.  He's got to take you in the palm of His hand.  It's the only way.  It's all He can do...without handles.

Think about that.