"He Made it Again"

"He Made it Again" 
by T. Austin-Sparks

"He made it again" (Jeremiah 18:4).

It was a crisis in the history of the clay. The Potter had been forced to the necessity of reducing it to a shapeless mass. After long and patient effort, working and painstaking He had been compelled to take a sad and painful decision. The clay must be broken and go into a period in which it will seem - only seem - that the Potter has discarded it. During that time the clay - because it is not mere inanimate and insentient matter, but self and God-conscious humanity - will have the occasion for considering its condition in the light of the past, and coming to see why this tragedy has overtaken it.

Into this crisis of the Potter's House we have to read both the history of Israel and the history of many a piece of work which God undertook, either in the Church or in individual lives. There are two or three aspects of this crisis.

Firstly, the clay - the material of the vessel - was selected, chosen. Not because it was better clay than any other. It was all-of-a-piece with the mass of humanity. There was everything on the positive side to justify it being left in its abandoned state, and no merit to command its consideration. It was all that it should not be and nothing of what it should be to satisfy God's requirement. Its selection was all of grace.

"Love to the loveless (unlovely) shown".

But in the mystery of grace and the potency of grace it was taken, separated, and brought onto the wheel of Divine purpose. It was spoken to, with promise and covenant; with comfort and exhortation; with instruction and warning; with entreaty and love. Not only in words, but in works; strange and mystifying, deep and painful, gracious and kindly. The combining of word and deed constituted the Potter's aim to produce "a vessel unto honour, meet for the Master's use, prepared unto every good work".

From time to time a warning shadow crept into the Potter's face, and it implied that all was not well with the clay. There was something inconsistent with His object. His sensitive fingers met some foreign and unyielding substance. He added a little more pressure of pain, of warning, of instruction, of exhortation; but that propensity, that adhesion persisted.

At last, after long and thorough endeavour, the Potter had to say 'I cannot go on, the only hope lies along a course of confusion, suspense, and breaking down'.