Sometimes it feels like we’re not good enough, strong enough, brave enough, or talented enough for God’s service. Even worse, sometimes we feel like we’re damaged goods, easily broken or even broken beyond repair. The truth is, we are, but we are held together by something stronger than ourselves.
Keith was one of my childhood friends. He lived about three blocks away, but maybe only a block if I cut through my neighbor’s backyard. We spent many hours at each other’s homes pretending to be going on adventures. His own long rectangular shaped backyard included a small wooded section, a shack, and a garden. While I have no memory of the plant-life in that garden, I do remember the clay jars.
You know the kind of jars I’m talking about. The dirty brown jars you can purchase at Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot or any lawn and garden store from two to fifteen dollars or more depending on size. Or better yet, they’re dirt cheap at a garage sale. Keith’s mom had a stack of them laying in the garden, right next to a small boulder-stone. Let me set the stage: two ten year old boys looking for something to do find a stack of a dozen potting plant jars next to a huge rock . . . what could possibly go wrong? After we smashed four or five of the jars, Keith’s mother bolted from her house like a greyhound racing dog bolting from a starting gate. While Keith was used to being in trouble by his mom, I wasn’t. She sent Keith to his room; she sent me home. If she told my mom, I didn’t get punished for it and I certainly never confessed my sin to my mother.
We treated the clay jars like they were disposable, insignificant, fragile, meaningless, and cheap. To be honest, they were. Two kids raised in a throw-a-way society were handling these clay jars with the exact value we placed on them. They were a dime-a-dozen, destined for the trash anyway, so we thought. We thought wrong, but looking back on that day, we had a point.
When Paul describes the powerful moment God partners with us in ministry, he notes the imbalance. Let that sink in for a moment. God wants to work with us in his ministry. The All-Powerful holy God teams up with the frail fallibility of humanity. Mind blowing, right? It’s like God taking something of value and giving it to the insignificance of someone else. Oh, and guess what? It is.
Here is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7a, “We have this treasure in jars of clay . . . ”
Treasures are to be safely locked up in a secure and sanctified vault where moth, rust, or thieves cannot get access. God should have taken the gospel and kept it safe and secure in heaven, next to his throne. In doing so he would have prevented it from being perverted, twisted, devalued, and destroyed. If he maintained control of the gospel in heaven, every hundred years or so, he could have removed the gospel from his heavenly vault and provided a world tour to remind us the beauty of this treasure. We could have purchased a ticket to gaze our eyes upon and marvel at this prized treasure. Instead, he freely entrusted it to us.
Here we are nothing more than a clay jar. We’re easily broken, damaged, disposed of, and insignificant as we’re just bargain-basement humans filled with flaws, shortcomings, sin, pride, and anxiety. We are fragile, both mentally and physically, not-to-mention spiritually. Some of us, if we’re honest, feel like we’re broken beyond repair. And we wonder. Why in God’s vast universe would he take the great and precious treasured gospel and give it to us to for safe keeping?
A good question, answered by Paul as he not only confirms we hold this treasure in jars of clay, but also “to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” God gives us this power of the gospel so that he can display his great work in and through us. It’s not our power, but our impotence. It’s not our strength, but our weakness. It’s not our greatness, but our insignificance. In the end when something incredible happens: God gets the credit for the work he does, not us.
Thus, it’s not about us. It never has. It’s all about God. It has always been all about God. He glorifies himself by showing his great power working through the frail and broken people as if we are clay jars. It’s called grace.
That’s how we roll. All of us are damaged goods, wounded and broken by life and situations. We’ve been wronged by people as much as we have wronged people. The scars maybe evident to all, or covered up by our masks, good works, or false pretense. But here we are the walking wounded entering people’s homes or lives to minister, to care, and to bring healing. We do that, not by our own power but through our own weakness – our own brokenness. The strength we exhibit comes from God.
Sometime back I was attending a funeral visitation for a dear friend. He was a gentle soul filled with joy, love, and grace. His nephew pulled me aside to share a story in which his deceased uncle had helped shape his perspective, a perspective he is trying to pass on to his children and grandchildren. He told me he was a young teenager when a close relative passed away. The passing was a blow to the family and they were mourning. They were hurting. In his youthful pride he told his uncle, “We need to be brave for the women.” At the time he was like thirteen years old, attempting to be the “man of the house,” convinced that being tearless was the manly and adulating behavior. His uncle gently reminded him, saying, “You know, Jesus wept at a funeral too.”
It’s not about the strength we think we have, but about the strength we have in God. It’s not about how well we hold it together, but how well God holds us together.
The late Christian song writer, Rich Mullins, may have captured it best when he wrote these words:
Well, it took the hand of God Almighty to part the waters of the sea ● But it only took one lie to separate you and me ● Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are ● And they say that one day Joshua made the sun stand still in the sky ● But I can’t even keep these thoughts of you from passing by ● Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are ■ And the Master said their faith was gonna make them mountains move ● But me, I tremble like a hill on a fault line just at the thought of how I lost you ● When you love you walk on the water, just don’t stumble on the waves ● We all want to go there something awful, but to stand there it takes some grace ● Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are ■ We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made ● Forged in the fires of human passion ● Choking on the fumes of selfish rage ● And with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart ● We must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are.
The truth is we’re not. We are not that strong. Such lyrics drive home to the truth of Paul’s image that we are like fragile, disposable clay jars: easily damaged, easily demolished, easily discarded. But herein lies the good news for those who feel like they are spiritually falling apart, for maybe the point Paul is making is that God acts like the duct tape holding us together.
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)