In order to become a great work of art, a lump of clay doesn’t become a beautiful piece of pottery in an instant, but first must be taken through a laborious process.
The first step in being made a masterpiece is simple:
Being beaten into submission.
A potter can’t use hard clay. It must be moldable, submitting to whatever the potter has designed for it. So the potter beats the clay to make it soft, kneading it over and over until it can be properly used, choosing to be formed into greatness, however its master chooses to use it.
After the painstaking process of being beaten into shape, the clay is formed into a rough shape that resembles something like a work of art. But it’s still ugly. It’s nowhere near a great masterpiece. Closer, with a shape, but still nothing worth buying. Kinda like this vase/ashtray I once made for my mom in the 3rd grade.
So then, in order to make it beautiful, a potter must cut away at the clay. Sides are shaved, huge chunks are whittled away, and pieces of the clay are taken out to make a less lumpy and more refined-looking piece that finally looks like the work of genius that the artist had envisioned in the first place.
You’d think that at this point, it’d finally be ready, after constantly being pounded, then meticulously formed into a magnificent product after closely cutting out any chunks that hindered the beauty that was enclosed inside.
Nope.
Then it gets taken into the fire.
A kiln is freakin hot. Hotter than Nicaragua in the middle of the day during September. Anything made out of clay would be worthless unless it gets taken into a kiln and cooked at a few hundred degrees.
Then, and only after that whole process, can it be labeled as a great work of art.
We all want to be created into a masterpiece, but are we willing to be beaten, cut into, and placed into a great fire in order to become it?
Sometimes, we are placed into many situations where we wonder what’s the point of all this? Why is God sending me through this season? Not to punish us, but to create in us a greater work of art, to produce in us a deeper character that is worth being used for great things.
