The sovereignty of God is a somewhat terrifying reality. Just ask Job. We are granted a glimpse into the throne room of Heaven to get the back story; we get to eavesdrop on God interviewing the reporting angels, specifically the renegade Lucifer, once known as the Morning Star and now called simply Adversary. But Job had no context for the sudden disaster that became his waking nightmare, other than what he had been taught about the Creator God by his father and grandfather. We can hear Lucifer’s challenge to God’s right to rule (just one more repetition of his millennia-old slogan in his bid for personal glory). We watch amazed, as God chooses Job to be His personal champion– Exhibit A in this round of the cosmic face-off– God’s demonstrated worth resting on the reactions of one man. But Job had no idea of the cause he was fighting for, this man who lived earnestly before God in the everyday, somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, only a few generations removed from Abraham. Sounds rather grand on paper, like a super-hero story from ancient times. Except that Job was no super-hero, and the only power he had was faith in a God who held all things in His hands, when the world came crashing down. “For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.” (Job 3:25) You don’t generally get an advance memo, when those kinds of things happen.
As a child I used to read that story for the exciting throne-room part and the happy ending where God rewards His champion for staying strong, and kind of skim through all the heart-searching in the middle. But as an adult, at some point you can’t help but read Job’s story from his perspective, because you know what it is like to face the unexpected, to see your biggest fears come to pass and know just how helpless you are to fix it. And you might even find yourself a kindred spirit to this man who wanted to do the right thing even when he was hurting, who hangs onto his faith even while he wrestles with the really big questions of “Where is God when it hurts?” and “If God is all-powerful, then why did He allow this to happen?” Under the prodding of his not-so-compassionate friends, Job even gets down to some of the deeper questions that we would rather not put into words at all, the kinds of thoughts that surface at night when everything else goes silent and fears are magnified: “What if everything I know about God isn’t even true?”…”Does He hear me when I cry out to Him? Does He care about me?” And the fact is that we don’t often get to know the reasons why things happen, and God doesn’t have to explain it to us at all. Maybe that’s why He bothered to record the back-story on Job for us, to to remind us that the picture is so much bigger than what we can see from here.
There’s a reason God uses the potter’s wheel as a metaphor for how He shapes lives. The prophets say it best: “…you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8) We are His idea, His creation, and our lives are being shaped to show His glory. Pottery-making is a personal undertaking– between the Potter, his wheel, and the malleable clay. It is messy, hands-on, time-consuming molding and steps of process layered on, with waiting in between. And pottery-making is the business of the Potter. All the clay has to do is bend and stretch and yield to His hands. And God promises not to stop; He will keep working until time runs out. Paul writes it down for us, in one of his letters: “…He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6) It’s a lot of work for something that will get banged up anyway, in everyday use. But that’s okay, because it isn’t really about the pots. In the end it is all about the Creator and His worth, His right to rule, and His glory on display through His work.
And this is where it gets scary for things made of clay: fragile, ordinary, dispensible in the grand scheme of things, and yet living and self-aware. And sometimes we might wish He were not so persistent in His work, because it is the strong hands of the Potter that press till you think you might break, can’t breathe under the strain; His plan that heats the oven and chooses the glaze; His will that decides the use of the pots. “Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ ” (Isaiah 45:9) I struggled with that when I was younger, not wanting to hear what God was saying through the prophet: “You aren’t in charge….You don’t get to decide what experiences will press, or where your path will lead you….Your life belongs to the Potter.” This is the meaning of the word sovereignty: God does whatever He wants, however He wants, whenever He wants, and to whomever He wants, for His own glory and His own purposes. It would be utterly terrifying, but for the nail holes on the Potter’s hands proclaiming His love for us, and the grace that still flows down every day to cover us, help us.
No wonder Jesus knew we would need a Comforter: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever…” (John 14:16) The Apostle Paul knew that comfort first-hand: “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5) It is the Holy Spirit who reminds us of God’s love, when the way gets dark. He is the divine Helper who brings our thoughts back to rest on Truth when they run wild in the night, who opens our eyes to see God’s unfailing righteous character on which His sovereignty rests. He shows us what clay pots are best used for: to hold the living glory of God and let it shine out all of the cracks, to fulfill His plans for us in the average ordinary everydays, relying on His strength so that anyone watching will see His tremendous beauty and rejoice. We may never get the back-story, or learn where all this is heading, but that is because we are just the clay, and there is a Potter who takes care of all that. Scary to trust His right to rule? Sure it is, until we get to know Him better.
Job didn’t even have the blazing milestone of the cross on which to hang his faith, but still he wrestled to understand and believe, right down to the last dregs of hope and reason. And in the end, Job bowed down and worshiped, though He still had no explanation for what had happened to him….“I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6) Turns out that all he really needed was to see the Creator more clearly, and bow to His sovereignty; considering Job’s example as a real-life clay pot, I think he was a super-hero after all.
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“I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose…’ ” (Isaiah 46:9-10)
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“All along, let us remember we are not asked to understand, but simply to obey…”
Amy Carmichael, Candles in the Dark