No Handles

I should start by saying that Isaiah is probably my favorite book in the Bible. No, definitely my favorite book in the Bible (sort of unusual, I know).  If I’m going through a phase where I just randomly open my Bible for devotions, I usually open to Isaiah, and I’m rarely disappointed.

Recently, I did just that and read this: 

“Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”? or “Your work has no handles”?” Isaiah 45:9 NRSV

As I read it, I started to sort of automatically nod my head in assent. That is after all what the writer of Isaiah is going for.  He’s trying to make a terribly obvious point that anyone with any sort of brain would agree with.  Of course: who would strive with their maker? I keep going, and am caught short by the next question: Does the clay ask, “What are you making?” 

Ummm….I feel like I ask that question of God all the time.

Woe to me, I suppose.

But the problem is, sometimes it’s so hard to tell what exactly God is making, what God is doing in us, and we as humans want to know. Some might say it’s just simple curiosity. I think it’s a little less innocent than that, and more of a control thing.

And what about the next part: Does the clay say “your work has no handles”?

The correct answer that Isaiah is going for is: “of course not.” Of course the clay doesn't say that.

And yet, isn’t that problem? God’s work so often has no handles. Nothing concrete to hold onto. No blueprint or sketch to reference.

I’ve always found it interesting how we (myself included) like to hold onto handles even when they don’t matter. Like holding onto the handles on a roller coaster when the handles are attached to your harness. If you’re harness fails and you go flying off a roller coaster, chances are those handles won’t help. Or how nervous parents with teenage drivers hold that handle above the passenger side window. Like that’s going to make a difference.

I once noticed going through pictures from church camp that everyone going on the zipline holds onto the rope that connects them to the line.  Their tight grasp serves no purpose. If the zipline breaks, that rope is going down just as fast as they are.  Still, nearly everyone holds it. It gives a false sense of control, even in situations when we have none. It makes us feel like we’re doing something.

The temptation is always wanting to be more like the potter than the clay. Wanting not just for something to hold onto, something solid, but to be the one making the design. In that light, it’s hard to forget that the original sin was wanting to be like God.

If you’ve ever watched a potter with a wheel the shape is constantly changing.   Just when you think it’s almost done, they make one bend and it looks like everything is nearly back to square one again. Truthfully, each little bend and adjustment is contributing to the final shape. Even those times when it looks like things are nearly starting over. Those moments are adding angles and details that may matter in the end.

But we want to know the direction ahead of time, and truthfully I’d rather avoid those moments when the clay gets smooshed almost back to the beginning, feeling like we’re starting over with no sense of what shape is coming next.

And while I want to nod my head in solemn agreement with Isaiah, I know that wouldn’t be honest. I’m the one saying, “Hey! Whatever you’re doing, there’s nothing to hold onto! You haven’t given me any handles!”

And that’s the trouble for us, at least often for me. When we are being shaped and molded into something new, there are no handles, there isn’t necessarily anything to hold on to, nothing to make us feel like we are in control, and often we haven’t even gotten a glimpse of the vision for the final product.

It is a grand design, no doubt, God’s work in us, but it is not our design. We are neither the architect or the foreman, merely the clay. And the clay has very little say in the outcome or the process. I don’t think we’re very good at being clay. I’m not.

The NLT translation phrases the verse this way

“What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator. Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, “Stop, you’re doing it wrong!” Does the pot exclaim, “How clumsy can you be?” Isaiah 45:9 NLT

I kind of like the sarcastic tone of this one :-)   But God’s work in us often does feel clumsy. Probably because we’re fighting it. Trying to avoid being clay. Even as I attempt to let go and lean into trust, even as my lips form the prayer “make me clay”, I feel my mind resist it. The rational part of me doesn’t really want to give permission to be molded, especially if it means be smooshed back down only to seemingly begin again. Especially if it means a totally different shape than I imagined or planned.

I ask God all the time, “what are you making?”  Sometimes I ask directly, sometimes I raise the question simply by my lack of trust. I’m the one who says to God “your work has no handles!”

Little ones don’t have this problem, I’ve noticed, of needing to hold on.

Take this example. Cara is obsessed with the pool.  One morning I walked into her room at 7:45 am when she woke up.  As soon as she saw me, she stuck her face against the slats of her crib and, with eyes like saucers whispered, “Go pool water???”

Good morning to you too, honey.  No, I haven’t had any coffee yet, thanks for asking.

She’d go to the “pool water” four times a day if I let her. And she’s fearless.

She jumps off the edge constantly.  She’ll come up to the edge where I’m ready to catch her, and then take 3 surprise steps the other way and jump.  She just trusts that I’m there, no matter where she is.  It reminds me of Psalm 139:

If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.  Psalm 139:9-10

No matter where her unexpected wandering takes her, she trusts that I’m ready to catch her.

After all, she’s used to being held.

Perhaps the point of this verse in Isaiah is that we’re not meant to have handles. We’re not designed to be gripping tightly to plans and predetermined futures. We’re made to be clay in the hands of a loving God who never leaves us.

We’re used to holding on to things, but instead, we’re made to be held. Made to be twisted and turned and wrecked and reworked so that we display the masterpiece of God’s love to world yearning for that kind of beauty

…even though we’re not always that good at being clay.

But it’s really only when we let go of the ways we cling so tightly to our plans and desires and scenarios and dreams of how we think we should turn out, it’s only then that we can step back and start to watch the design unfold. We can let the twists and turns mold and shape and change us in ways that will turn out beautifully.

It’s when we stop looking for handles, those tangible things we can hold onto, be in charge of, only then, that our hands are free and open to receive the gifts of God.

I think that’s this life of faith; learning to jump in; to live with open hands; learning that when there are no handles, we’ll be caught.

Trusting that even when we let go --especially when we let go--

of our plans and designs,  we’ll be held.

Playing Beneath Altars

When I worked as a pastor, Scott was also very involved in a variety of ministries, and we often “passed” each other coming and going from church several evenings a week.   What was like ships passing in the night, transformed, after having our daughter, into well choreographed kid-handoffs.  I remember one evening Scott had band practice, and I had a meeting which overlapped a bit. Scott was hoping to be able to participate in band practice even with a six month old, so he took a blanket and some toys and set her up next to him on the stage at the front of the sanctuary (Ah, the days of children who stay sitting on blankets...)  Because of where everything was positioned with band equipment, there were only a few places to put her.  I have this crystal clear memory of walking into the sanctuary to collect our little bundle and seeing her playing quietly on a blanket beneath the altar.  

The moment happened right towards the end of a decade of being on staff in a church in some way or another nearly constantly.

I so wish I had a picture, though the image is still plain as day in my mind.  It was one of my last weeks serving at the church.  And there, my little daughter sitting, playing beneath the altar, blissfully unaware of exactly where she was, and yet, completely comfortable.   It was at once this intensely beautiful and yet heartbreaking moment, encapsulating all these tensions in my life at the time.   

This new little one, sitting in the place I usually stand, behind the altar, a place that, at that point, I knew God was not calling me to stand in this next season. 

While I didn’t leave my position in church because of the birth of my daughter, I am never unaware that the timing of God calling me away from that ministry coincided with her first year and brought with it the blessing of spending more time with her, which it still does as I work part time.   

And I know how important this ministry of being a mom is.  I really do.  

But still, not serving in a church in this season in my life is a shift in the way I understand my own sense of calling that I struggle with mightily. 

And yet, even as it cast all the emotion of this transitional moment into sharp relief, this image is also somewhat unexpectedly serving to frame this new season.  

Playing beneath the altar.  

In the Hebrew Scriptures, people would make altars whenever something important happened, whenever God revealed himself anew, or made a way when it seemed there was none.  The altars were built as a reminder of God’s presence in that place.

One of my favorite stories building altars is from Joshua 4.  The nation of Israel had just crossed the Jordan into the promised land.  Joshua commands one person from each tribe to get rocks from the river they had just crossed and to place them in the camp.  Then, when the children ask why are these stones here, they are to tell them of all God has done. 

The Israelites were to set up these stones amidst their camp, their daily lives, to literally provoke the question from their children, and have an opportunity to tell of the faithfulness of God.  It was this idea that the kids would wander upon these stone piles, as they go about their day, and then ask why they are there.  It was parents placing things in their child’s path in order to create space to tell the story of God.  They were instructed to claim this normal place, this camp, where they live and eat and sleep and play as a place where God intervened, rescued, and revealed his power and love. 

I’m learning, that in this new season of raising my daughter to know Jesus, that’s a lot of what I’m doing.  Building altars.  

Marking the ordinary places and moments as holy.  Claiming them as God-created, God-given. Revealing the ways in which the presence of God infuses her daily life, even as she plays, unaware.  Filling in the words as she discovers this story of creation and redemption, of God at work all around. 

It’s the work of building reminders into her routine, her life, all kinds of moments so that we can’t help but be swept up in it—this larger than life saga of creation and redemption; marking and naming and claiming God’s presence...as she plays.  Teaching her to tune her ear to the music of the Spirit all around. Giving her the lenses with which to see the work of the Father in the world.

Slowly building an awareness that her whole life is part of a sacred story; weaving the threads of her everyday into the narrative of God's love.

And as I reflect on that work… 

though it often feels worlds away from my previous role,  

maybe it isn’t so different than what I was doing before.