Center My Life

Slam me down and spin me around.  Keep me centered.  We have been singing a song in church lately that has the line, “Center my life on your name.”   Being the pottery nut that I am, the same image pops into my mind every time.

When you are sitting at a potter’s wheel the first thing you have to do is take your lump of clay and center it on the wheel.  You do that by shaping it into a ball and then slamming it down on the very center of the wheel.  If you miss you must pick it back up, shape it and slam it back down.  You have to do this until you get it right.  No shortcuts.

Only after you have your portion of clay in the middle of your wheel can you then begin the spinning and go on with the process of molding it and creating something beautiful.

What happens if you don’t get the clay centered and try to move forward with an off-centered lump?  Nothing good and nothing beautiful.  You will fight it, trying to get the clay centered and to a place where it will be workable.  It will eventually be so off-kilter that it will turn into an ugly mess and possibly fly off the wheel all together (I know this from experience).

Our lives in the same way need to be centered on Christ.  It is a perfectly simple visual.  If we stay centered (if we are in God’s Word, fellowshipping with other believers, praying, praising), we are shapeable, malleable, and able to be formed into a vessel of good purpose.  We will be drawn vertically upward stretching ourselves toward Godly beauty under the perfect hands of the Potter. 

I did not invent this sweet analogy, God did.  “But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah 64:8.

With God as our potter what can we do as the clay?  Be still and know that he is God. We are to remain on the wheel, centered and in his capable hands. Always moving and active yet only in the way that he guides us.  Not trying to move in our own direction so that the gracious Potter must pick us up and slam us back down again (for our own good).  Not trying to harden ourselves and be resistant under his loving hand.  Don’t be ignorant or stubborn clay. 

“You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?” Isaiah 29:16

Sound ridiculous to think of clay talking back to the potter?  Yep, sure does!  But we do it all the time.  We question God’s plan for us, we doubt his intentions, we complain about our form and our seemingly unexciting purpose.  We tell him, “Hands off!  I can do it myself.”  We need to stop sassing back and instead trust him and let him have his way.  He is perfect remember, we are not.

Be malleable so he can do his work, growing you up, shaping you to hold more and more of him.  “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7

When centrifugal force starts to pull against us, when we feel the pain and frustration that comes when we flail and come undone in life.  Our prayer should be for God to please pick us up and slam us back into the place where we can once again flourish under his care.  Difficult?  Yes.  Painful?  Possibly.  But oh so worth it.  So much better than finding yourself thrown off and left to dry out, all because you did not trust the Potter.
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Ladies, let this be your prayer today: “God, do whatever is necessary to center my life upon you that I may be made into something beautiful and can be filled with the treasures of your goodness all for your glory.”