BEING PERFECTED ON THE POTTER'S WHEEL

I sometimes say to friends when discussing college basketball, “Take the matter of the University of Kentucky's remarkable 38 and 1 win/loss record last year.  The team was not perfect, but week by week they improved.  They were being perfected.  It’s a process.”  Just yesterday, Kentucky’s coach, John Calipari, said about this year’s team with several new players, “It’s going to be a process, but we’ve got a chance to be special again.”  Now with a group of young men with great potential, but with flaws, shortcoming, and egos, he’s taking them on the journey of “being perfected.”  We’ll see how far they get and how well they do.

That sports metaphor is just right for us spiritually.  We may be flawed with shortcomings, a fallen, sinful nature, and a measure of ego.  By the grace or God, however, having repented of sin, surrendered our hearts and lives to Jesus, and chosen to follow him, we are not perfect, but we are “being perfected.”  It's a process!

A beautiful ceramic vase is also occasioned by a process.  An artist takes a lump of clay and begins to shape it into something more.  Spiritually, Jesus is the Potter with his hands on our lives and his foot pumping the Potter’s wheel.  Then we may ask, “If he is the Potter, what’s or who’s the wheel?  In the context of UK basketball, the players are the clay.  The coach is the potter, and the wheel is others, the university and its athletic program.  Spiritually, for us the wheel is others, family, close friends, colleagues, our faith community.  They all may be the means of grace that God provides as he get’s his hands on the clay of our lives.  The Potter and the wheels are both the company we keep that spiritually shapes us.  We are being spiritually perfected into Christ's likeness.

And you!  Are you being shaped and perfected?  Whose hands shape the clay of your life?  What and who are the wheels does God spin as he works to shape you into his likeness? . . . or are you someplace else as clay in some other's hands on some other wheel?  

The word of the Lord came to me . . .

Can I not do with you as the potter does?

Like clay in the hand of the potter,

so are you in my hand.

Jeremiah 18: 5&6