THE COMPANY YOU KEEP BECOMES A POTTER’S WHEEL

Asbury University - My Alma Mater

When I was transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood, God blessed me in so many ways through one man and his wife. I've

lost count of all the ways.  He was my major professor.  It was a special time when God used them as means of grace in my life.  In surprising ways their coming along side occasioned a series of unanticipated blessings.  They were the Potter's wheel.

I was the third child in a family of six children of parents who were in Christian ministry (The Salvation Army). We were rich in faith, but relatively poor economically.  I plowed my way through college on scholarships and by working as many as twenty hours a week on campus.  The first year I cleaned the floors, bathrooms, and “chalkboards” of the science building.  The second year I mopped the college kitchen floor each night, seven nights a week.  Then, beginning in my third year, my major professor also became my mentor.  He asked me to serve as a research assistant that year and the next.  He also insisted that I take directed readings from him in my major field of study, psychology.  He knew what he was doing to prepare me for the future.

Dr. Alan Moulton

When I took the graduate record examination in the process of applying for graduate school, I “blew the top off the exam!”  His interest shaped my life and gave me the competence and confidence to apply for admission into the doctoral program at the nearby university.  When I did, I asked him if he would write a letter of recommendation required by the application process.  Here’s what he did. He was so amazing.  He wrote a very strong, positive letter and shared with me a copy.  I was pleased and grateful.  But he then went out of his way, the second mile.  He walked the letter into the chairman of the department’s office at the university, the same department where he was finishing his Ph.D., and plead my case thereby promoting my acceptance into the doctoral program.  It was unanticipated, unprecedented support.

Kitchen tables become sacred places

Once in the doctoral program, Dr. Moulton and his wife, Yvonne, (along with mine) became my biggest supporters as I plowed through the rigors of doctoral studies, research, and the dissertation.  Their kitchen table became a special place of refuge, a special alter where God’s grace through their advice, hospitality, and prayer was liberally available and applied.  God does these things.  Through those who faithfully walk in the Light of God’s grace, he guides them to come along side others (like me back then) who needed God’s grace in specific ways.  

God shapes the clay of our lives and uses mentors and wiser agents of grace to shape our lives.  For a season or two, they become the Potter’s wheel on which we find ourselves as the clay.  That’s one of my testimonies of God’s creative, proactive work in that formative time of my life.  I have many more testimonies of God’s grace over the years.  I hope to share another some time.  But what about you?  Who are the Potter’s wheels in your life?  A friend, a spouse, a professor, pastor, stranger?  Whose are the Potter’s wheel you keep?  To whom is God prompting you to come along side as the Potter's wheel to help shape the clay of their lives?

Let us consider how we may spur on another on

toward love and good deeds.

Let us not give up meeting together, . . .

but let us encourage one another.

Hebrews 10:24&25