The potter and the clay.

I know this a whole lot cliche and this example may get used a lot...but I finally really understand it.

This semester I am taking a ceramics art history class to fulfill my art requirements.
It's three and a half hours long, goes right through lunch, and has dried out my hands to the point of cracking and bleeding. It's not very fun, and no one is remotely friendly at all...what I thought would be my most fun, and easiest class this semester, has turned out to be the longest, most boring, hungriest, frustrating class I've ever taken. For a few weeks, we've been doing a lot of wheel work, rather than pinch pots or coil pots, or any other project.

Trying to make something on the wheel is literally the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. First, you actually have to try and mesh your clay to the wheel plate. If not, then your clay goes flying off the second you start to spin it...(absolutely 100% embarrassing!) Then, you have to center your clay. What? Honestly, I don't think I've ever used my arm muscles this intensely before. It can take more then twenty minutes, bent over the wheel, elbows on your knees (kind of how batman rides his bat-motorcycle...in fact, maybe I pretend I'm batman on that motorcycle to make the time go a little faster), trying to get your clay in the right spot with no air bubbles, and mashing it down, and squeezing it back up again...it's not fun. Keeping it wet because it can't get too dry, molding it, creating "a foot"...it's all very specific and takes a whole lot of time and effort.

However, I finally literally understand the potter and the clay references when it comes to God and his children. God is at his wheel daily, and I, specifically my heart and spirit, are his uncooperative, stubborn, and annoying clay. Despite how stubborn I actually am, He likes to be the potter. He likes molding my heart to be like His! He is working on my heart every second of every day. Shaping me, and whispering subtle reminders  for me to be like Him, and not to trust anyone else with the shaping of my heart. I'm guessing it's a tough job, because sometimes I have a really tough heart. He probably doesn't find it easy to center it(maybe He pretends He's batman too), or to keep it soft enough to work with...but I try to do my best to work with Him, and let Him guide me to be who He has intended me to be all along. 

Isaiah 64:8 - But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand..