Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. – Isaiah 64:8

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 7, 2017): Isaiah 64

We are all in process. Nothing inside of us is set. We are a continuation of what we were yesterday. But the direction of the continuation is also not set. It is really up to us. Which way do you want to go?

This is the story of our lives. We are born and from that first gulp of air that we breathe in, the process of shaping us into who we will be begins. We are shaped throughout our early years. We learn to walk and to dress and to tie our shoelaces. We leave home and learn to play and co-operate with others. We learn to count and to read. The process continues as we learn to reason and to argue – to think past the concrete things that held our attention in earlier days.

And then something strange happens. At some point in the continuing process, we decide that we have learned enough. And so we stop. Soon we decide that we are too old and that we can’t learn anymore. This is just who we are – there is no more. It is like a marathon runner running a race and deciding halfway through the course that the race is over – that we don’t have to run anymore. We just leave the track. Because we quit, we will never know what we could have done – how far or how fast we could have gone. All we know for sure is that we quit.

Life is a marathon race that starts with our first breath and ends with our last. And in between, we are shaped. Learning takes place and often learning hurts – the shaping is painful. The easy path is to quit – to stop learning and say that we have learned enough. But that is walking away before the race is over.

God reminds Isaiah that the contest continues – that we are in process, and sometimes the process hurts, but the Potter is molding the clay into something beautiful. We just need to stay on the path and continue to let him shape us. Our faith tells us that the Potter knows what he is shaping the clay into – what it is that he is trying to bring out of us.  And we submit to the Potter’s shaping hands.

Day by day, under the guidance of the Potter, we are becoming more like Christ. The Potter is shaping us. Sometimes the process is painful. But don’t quit the process – stay in the marathon. Trust that the Potter knows what it is that he is doing.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 65