Broken Pottery

As I was driving in to school the other morning, I was listening to the radio, and one of my favorite songs came on, Casting Crowns' "East to West". There's a line in it that says, "Jesus can you show me just how far the east is from the west / ‘Cause I can’t bear to see the man I’ve been / Rising up in me again".

That song is powerful on many levels, but on that particular day my mind had been drifting to pottery, partly because we're coming up on the season of crafts fairs and pottery is my number one purchase at those. Probably another reason pottery had come to my mind is that the song just before ended with a few bars of an old hymn, the sound of which made me think of "Have Thine Own Way, Lord", one of my favorites.

We all have dark secrets that we hide. We all have internal flaws. The combination of those two songs and the image of pottery along with my recent teaching of Hawthorne drew my mind to the pottery festivals of Japan. Before a potter would sell a teacup, he or she would gently thump the cup or bowl to make sure it rang true. A whole, unflawed cup or bowl would chime softly. If there was some hidden imperfection, instead of a musical sound, a dull chink was heard instead. The flaw killed the musical purity of it. A potter who was proud of his or her craft would refuse to sell the flawed piece, and it would wind up as a reject headed for a pile of shards somewhere.

I always felt so sorry for those flawed cups and bowls. In truth, there were times when I wanted to go from stall to stall and buy them to give them a home. You see, I identified with them. I have always figured that if God were to give me the "thump" test, there's no way I'd ring pure and true. I wish I could say that I'd chime with a note that would bring joy to his heart, but I think it's far more truthful to say that I belong on the pile of shards. I'm just grateful that God is the master potter who can recreate flawed pieces and find a use for me despite these flaws, maybe even because of them.