God is Holy

The difference between something mundane and something special is the story that we've associated with it. 

Face it - that bowl that you always mix up waffles in because your grandmother always mixed up waffles in it isn't really special. It's just a bowl. But it has become special because of the story that you've associated with it: it's grandma's waffle bowl. 

The little knickknack that sits on your desk is nothing more than a little knickknack. Except that you remember the story of how you got, from whom, under what circumstances, and that makes it special. 

The curtain in the Tabernacle that separated the holy place from the Most Holy Place was fundamentally no different, as a curtain, than the ones that hung in the courtyard. Except that this curtain had a story-based significance that made it something more. 

There is a passage in the Scriptures that talks about God as a potter and declares, "If God wants to make one pot for everyday use and another one for sacred use, what is it to you? He can do that" (a paraphrase). 

But the truth is that there are no sacred things; there are only common things. It is common things that become sacred things when God attaches His story to them. 

Zechariah says it more succinctly: God makes common things holy (14:21). 

And I am so thankful. 

I will tell you - I am a common thing. I am the most common of things. I am a simple human female with very human things about me. Human things so common as to be completely boring. If you were to put my life on paper, as it exists in and of itself, it would not be anything very impressive or meaningful. 

But when you start filling in my story with all of the things God is doing with my very common self, it becomes something more. 

When you see the ways that He's gifted my very common flesh, that He's graced my very common spirit, that He's blessed my very common soul, I become something more than I could ever be on my own. This fragile piece of clay that looks like nothing more than average pottery is actually something very sacred...because in my very fragile parts, I carry His very amazing story. 

I carry a story of redemption. I carry a story of grace. I carry a story of love. I carry a story of favor. I carry a story of healing and holiness. I carry a testimony within me that cannot be carried in any other way, and because of that story that I hold, I am anything but common. 

I am His handiwork, His masterpiece, His treasure. I am His light on top of a hill; don't try to put me under a basket. Maybe I am a basket, but I am carrying the leftover scraps of bread from the miracle that He just performed. I am a living, breathing, walking evidence of the goodness of God. 

And that makes this very common woman something more. Something holy. 

And you are, too. 

In what ways is your very common self carrying God's story? In what ways is He, the master potter, taking your common thing and making you holy? Do you see it?