This morning I was reading from Isaiah 45 and was struck by verse 9.
"Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker--
An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth!
Will the clay say to the potter, 'What are you doing?'
Or the thing you are making say, 'He has no hands'?"
See, I spend a decent amount of time asking God what he's doing. What He's up to. Why I'm hurting. Why certain people push me away. This verse convicted me so deeply, and I think it's in part because I've been making scrubs lately.
Scrubs are expensive, especially for me because my legs are so long. It's been easier and cheaper to buy fabric and make them myself. But fabric is expensive too, so I've been buying flat sheets and cutting them up. Then I realized that what I'm doing, and what is being talked about in Isaiah, is kind of all the same.
I take my flat sheet, who if it could think would think that he was completely finished and ready to serve a great purpose of protecting my really pretty comforter, and I cut it up. Usually I'm not very nice about it and I use super sharp scissors. I shove pins into it to mark my place, and when I'm done it looks like a hot mess. Then I shove a needle into it over and over again, inflicting more pain. I fold it over onto itself and cut some more.
But in the end, I have a new outfit. The flat sheet that thought it was finished has now become something more purposeful and more useful for what I'm up to.
The same thing is happening with me.
God is at work cutting me and trimming me. So often I feel like a hot mess. He's shoving a needle into me over and over and over again. But when he's done, I'll be something so much more incredible than a simple set of scrubs, and not just because I started out more complex than I piece of fabric.
The same is true with you. God is at work. He's cutting and pinning. Stitching and folding. Working. Hurting. Making. Shaping. And the end result will be so much better than anything you or I could ever imagine. I can't wait for that.
