Ordinary

Fifty cents. When I was a kid playing ball at D.W. Wilson community center in Tullahoma, Tennessee, I remember buying fifty cent soda cans from the machine in between pickup games. I’m not sure you can do that any more. In fact, there isn’t a whole lot that fifty cents will buy these days. 

There is one thing I know it will buy…a pound of clay. Enough to make a nice looking coffee mug. Clay is pretty cheap. It’s pretty ordinary. Pretty plain. And it’s pretty accessible. It’s also pretty moldable. Yep…clay is 100% yielded to the hands of the potter. It doesn’t have a mind of its’ own. It doesn’t resist. Doesn’t talk back or tell the potter what it was thinking. It completely relinquishes control to the one who handles it. 

And as I look back on my journey, I think that is what I desire to identify with the most…just a simple, plain, ordinary, inexpensive average ball of clay…completely yielded to the hands of the Master Potter. Jesus painted the picture for us well. He spoke as the Father gave him the words. He acted as the Father directed him to act. He didn’t chase his own dreams. He didn’t say, “Let me live my life.” He didn’t do it his own way. He just gave himself over to the Master…completely…to be used the Master’s way to accomplish the Master’s purpose. 

So when I look backward on my time, I think what if I had been yielded to the will of the Master and not my own? And when I look forward into my future, I think, “Father, make me like clay in Your hands. Make Your dreams my dreams. Make Your thoughts my thoughts. Make Your ways my ways. Make Your words my words. Teach me to do it Your way. All of it. Simply put, take my life and make it Yours…so that they might know You. Take all my ordinary, plain, simple, and average and make it Your vessel…that sounds beautiful to me.”