Reflections, (Day 2, from Cleanding Thoughts)

     I went into the library to look up the Hebrew word for marred. Tears streamed down my face as I stared at the definition, it meant, "ruined." Unable to stop crying I went back into the bedroom and sat on the bed with my hands covering my face, had my life been so severely ruined that the Lord had no further use of me? Then through tear-filled eyes, I looked once again at the piece of pottery. It was even more beautiful than before! My tears had caused rays of light to twinkle across the room in a rainbow effect, and I could almost feel His gentle touch wiping them from my cheeks. He was the only one who could put my life back together. "For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11, NKJV). It was then that I realized that without the brokenness of my life, just as this piece of pottery, how could have His light shown through?

   As I sat there just starting as the light streaming through the pottery, I remembered how much I had desired to read His word at the beginning of my Christian walk and found it so difficult, not in the text, but in the words. Words had never made much sense to me. They had always been letters on a piece of paper that I didn't know how to put together. Because of dyslexia, reading had always been very difficult, and I would become so frustrated that I just gave up. After I came to know the Lord, when I was home alone, I would ask Him to teach me how to read. I remember the long months of reading the Word and listening to tapes until I had hidden His word in my heart, and in the process, he had taught me how to read.

   As I saw ts in his mental picture of the potter at the wheel, I noticed he never touched the clay without using the water. As the clay was spinning on his wheel, it was being shaped not only by the gentle touch of his hands but by the water as well. from the mental image of the potter, I realized that throughout my Christian walk, God had used His word to touch my life, to form who I was becoming in Him. Jesus had said to the Samaritan woman that He could give her living water, that if she drank from it, she would never thirst again, referring to the gift of eternal life when we come to know Him as our Lord and Savior. I thought of the Jewish custom during the Feast of Tabernacles when the priest brought a golden pitcher of water from the Pool of Siloam to the temple mount and poured it on the altar as an offering to God, symbolic of the water supplied from the rock during the exodus from Egypt. The book of John tells us Jesus stood and cried out to the people, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink, He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water" (John 7:37-38, NKJV). I remember the scripture Ephesians where Christ sanctifies his bride by washing her in the water of his Word. So many nights, I have drunk from His cup and cleansed myself in the water of His Word. Tonight I feel as though He has poured the golden pitcher of water over me and I could feel it cleansing me from head to toe; leaving my past in the pool of water at my feet.