Seven years ago I sat in the surgery ward of the county hospital with a three-month-old baby in my arms. This week an older child lay in the bed beside me. The feeling doesn’t change.

When the nurse takes your child away, the child you have borne, nursed, tended, and loved, there is an emptiness and you turn to the only place worth turning.

God.

When the doctor tells you that all is indeed not right, that your fears were not the imaginings of a hypochondriac mother, but in fact correct, there is an emptiness, and you turn to the only place worth turning.

God.

When you turn to God, the perspective changes.  What is pain becomes joy. What is loss becomes opportunity. What is lifeless clay, dead wood, or hard stone becomes beauty with purpose.

I see now that the child I was gently trying to shape with education, family time, Bible readings, and chats, is in the only place worth being, in the hands of the Master. My careful designing, delicate sanding, gentle rubbing are all acts of a mother without the Master’s vision. A wimp. A dreamer. A woman afraid.

The Master takes the clay and breaks it down and builds it back up until the day it is ready for His delicate design.

The Master takes the wood and hews large chunks, chiseling away the dead wood until it is ready for fine sanding.

The Master takes the stone and attacks it with a vengeance, bringing forth form from stubborn stone, until it is ready to be polished by the rubbing of the Master’s hand.

Such transformation hurts.

Such transformation can only succeed in His hands, in the hands of the Master.

The Master knows when to force and when to touch gently, when to chisel and when to sand, when to cut and when to rub smooth.

As a mother, I let my children fall, so that they may pull themselves up and walk. I let my children fail so they may learn the hard work of success. I let my children know disappointment so they may enter life with realistic empathy, not an entitlement mentality bred by misguided parenting.

As the Master, God does the same. He lets us fall. He cuts and hews. He polishes and adorns.

Making us what He wants us to be.

Making us His.

Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand,
so are ye in mine hand.
~Jeremiah 18:6

8 Responses to “In the Master’s Hand”