Clay Pots

Clay pots, or pottery jars. They are not used much anymore. We used to see them when we lived in Mexico. As a school boy, standing on a corner on cold mornings, I would buy a cup of hot chocolate from a street vendor who kept it steaming in a clay pot. Sanitation was the least of my thoughts in those days. She had two or three pottery cups that she would swish in a bucket of cold water between customers. The chocolate was good.

Now that we are more concerned with germs and disease, clay pots are not used as much. It's hard, practically impossible, to wash everything out of the pores, cracks, and defects in a pottery vessel. So we use ceramic pots, or stainless steel, or very decorative Pyrex dishes. They look nice, they can be cleaned, and they last a long time. Not so with a clay pot. All the pores and defects in the pottery cause food particles to be trapped therem and soon the clay pot takes on the fragrance of whatever filled it. You can pick one up and in one whiff know it was a bean pot, or a coffee pot, or a pickle jar. Its fragrance tells you what filled it.

Paul, in 2 Corinthians 4:7, says, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." (NIV)

If we were perfect, with no faults or weaknesses, we might have cause to boast about how great we are. But we are not. We have defects, cracks, pores in our character. We suffer physically, mentally, emotionally. So many ways. Yet when we allow ourselves to be filled with the Spirit of God, those weaknesses, those defects we suffer with, allow us, like clay pots, to take on the fragrance of his Spirit. It is those very weaknesses that allow the fragrance of the Holy Spirit to be revealed to the world. Without our weaknesses we would testify only of our own merit, rather than the "all-surpassing power [that] is from God".

Now, we certainly would not strive for defects in our character any more than we would purposefully try to poke holes in a clay pot. But rather than feeling defeated because we are not perfect, we can give thanks that his Holy Spirit is using our weaknesses to demonstrate His power and glory.

Do you need an example? I recently watched a documentary on the life and ministry of Elinor Young, a missionary to Irian Jaya. As a young girl she nearly died from a severe case of polio. It left her very weak and almost incapable of walking. Yet despite her physical weakness, she volunteered to serve in a remote part of Irian Jaya, now the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea. There the people nicknamed her "Bad Legs", and she had to be carried around on a chair. Yet she found that, rather than being a hindrance, her "bad legs" were the key that demonstrated God's love for the tribal people she worked with. It was her bad legs that allowed God's grace to shine through her own weakness. You can read her story at https://elinoryoung.com/ or watch here: