Canon Tony King P.P.

Source: Athenry News and Views (November/December issue, 2008)    

A beautiful china teacup tells her story……………”I wasn’t always like this, you know.  There was a time when I was just a cold, hard lump of clay.  One day the potter picked me up and said, “I could do something with this”. Then he started to put pressure on me and change my shape.   I said, “What are you doing? That hurts. Stop!”  But he said, “Not yet”.  Then he put me on a wheel and began to spin me around and around until I shouted, “Let me off”.   He replied, “Not yet”.  Then he shaped me into a cup and put me in a hot oven.

I cried, “ Let me out here, I’m suffocating”.  But he looked at me and said, “Not yet”. When he took me out, I thought his work on me was over, but then he started to paint me. I couldn’t believe what he did next.  He put me back into the oven, and I said,       

“I can’t stand this, please let me out!”  But he said, “Not yet”.   Finally, he took me out of the oven and set me on a shelf where I thought he had forgotten me. Then one day he took me off the shelf and held me up before a mirror. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had become a beautiful teacup that everyone wants to buy’.

There are things going on in your life today that you don’t understand. When you finally get to the place were God wants you to be, you’ll realise that He has been making you into a vessel He can use, bless, and use to bless others. So, allow God to shape you!  “We are the clay, and You are the Potter”, Isaiah 64:8. (The Word for Today)

That is what the season of Advent is about.  It is a shaping season.  Advent is a wake-up call. This season is a time of waiting “in joyful hope for the coming of Our Saviour”.  So it is a time for prayer and reflection so that we can prepare ourselves for the Lord’s coming. 

This season of Advent is unique in this year 2008.   It has not come before in the sense that we are different in this year to meet what it brings. We are different because of bereavement, or sickness or the birth of a child or we have moved house.  We are in a new situation. And let’s face it, we know many people who thought they would be with us this Advent and they are no longer with us.

So, this Advent offers us a fresh start and the invitation to take stock.   Like the chinatea-cup and the Potter, God is at work in us and he is inviting us to take the time to recognise his hand in what is happening in our lives, in our families and in the community where we live.   Our pathway to holiness in this Advent is like the clay that made the cup.  We are offering ourselves as the raw material for the hand of the Lord to shape us to reflect his beauty and goodness in the way we live our lives. We are all frail and fragile like the cup, but our strength is not in what we are ourselves but in what we allow the Potter to do with us.   So, be alert, be awake and be ready!    The day is coming when He will hold up the mirror.