You're Molded Clay, not a Heap of Dirt

“I feel worthless. I feel like dirt.”

We have all been in that place. Maybe you are there right now. As a community we just celebrated Ash Wednesday. We remembered that we do literally come from dirt and to dirt we shall return. Yet, only calling ourselves dirt misses the whole point of the creation story.

God molded us in His very hands. He created us with His fingerprints all over us. The model and image He was imagining as He shaped us was His Son. It is the same model God uses as He begins to recreate us in His image anew after we believe.

I agree that dirt is worthless, but pottery isn’t. That’s the finished product of molded clay. Clay makes appearances throughout the scriptures. My favorite is when Jesus makes clay in His own hands in order to heal a blind man (John 9:6). Jesus could have healed this man in any manner possible, but He chooses to make spit-clay to heal this man’s life-long struggle. The image of recreation comes sharply into focus.

Jeremiah 18 describes God as a potter and His people as clay. God has free reign to reshape and mold each us of as He chooses. He reminds us that His end goals are good, because we will continually look a little more and more like our Heavenly Father. We are chastised for questioning the Eternal Artist’s creative license, but encouraged that we will forever remain in our loving Sculptor’s hands. We must learn to trust God in the season of trimming, mashing, and reforming. We must lean on God while we are in the midst of horrid growing pains. True beauty and art seldom come easy.

Finally, we are God’s masterpiece, the crown of His creation (Ephesians 2:10); we were redeemed for a purpose and bought for a price (1 Corinthians 6:20). We were molded and shaped so that we might be wonderful simple pottery, jars of clay, earthen vessels. This follows God’s pattern of Creation in Genesis as He created vessels, containers, in the first three days (sky/space, seas, and dry land) and fills these containers the following three days (with stars, birds, fish, plants, and animals). God creates us to be containers so that we can carry the precious cargo of the gospel, a treasure beyond compare, a pearl of great price (2 Corinthians 4:7; Matthew 13:44; Matthew 13:45-46).

So, the next time negative thoughts come to haunt you, mocking you as worthless dirt, remind yourself that you are so much more: you are a beautiful masterpiece, a jar of clay containing the most beautiful treasure on earth, the gospel of Jesus Christ.