Tears in a Bottle

"So I went down to the potter's house and saw him working with clay at the wheel. He was making a pot from clay. But there was something wrong with the pot. So the potter used that clay to make another pot. With his hands he shaped the pot the way he wanted it to be."
— Jeremiah 18:3-4

About thirty-five years ago, a woman came to our church to preach. In the middle of the stage, someone had set up a potter's wheel with a lump of clay waiting on it. She wore a well-used apron and began talking about how God, as creator, had in mind exactly what He would make from that lump of clay.

She explained that the clay had to be massaged and worked first—to make sure no pieces of stone or hardened clay were hiding inside. She showed how a potter uses water as a lubricant to make the clay pliable. After some work, a bowl began to take shape. It was looking beautiful. And then she stopped.

She felt a small stone in the clay.

Without hesitating — without any regard for how much progress had already been made — she destroyed the pot right down to the lump again. Because any experienced potter knows that a vessel with stones in it is a vessel with weakness built into it. She extracted the stone, added more water, and started again.

I never forgot that image.

We are never finished in the Master's hands. He wants us to be perfectly usable and functional. And while the Bible doesn't specifically say where God gets the water to make the clay pliable, I like to think He uses our tears. The ones He stores in bottles. The tears from pain, trials, and loss — tears that lubricate the clay. No ordinary water will do when it comes to creating the perfect fix.

As with Jesus' disciples collecting the scraps of bread and fish after feeding the five thousand, God is not wasteful. I can't imagine He's wasteful of our tears either.

When I look at this photograph — those bottles catching the last light of a California sunset — I think about all of it. The shaping. The breaking down. The starting again.

And the water that makes it possible.