the destruction of the image without its Maker.

What a poor vessel was I, a black-hearted china unaware of it’s delicacy and beauty,
when I loathed the hands of He who was shaping me.
Who was I to say “what are You making?” and “Your work is poor!”

What poor, indignant creation was I!
I declared to He who formed me, “I am no longer yours!” and
then as quickly as I could despise the Creator and His creation,
the hands of a deceitful potter snatched me away.

The unskilled hands of this deceitful potter,
this one who knew naught how to remake something that didn’t belong to him,
were forceful and crass. He was a brutal beast,
cutting me up from the wheel while it still was turning and
drowning me in a kiln full of broken crockery that learned its ways from him.

Fired too quickly and crackling to pieces, a lifeless vessel was I, hoping to
survive and last in one piece and
ashamed of the image of me.
All I could see was the blemished surfaces, warped and crazing.
All I could feel was the deformation of me; this was my unhopeful existence.
In the hands of the hardened beast, the heart of me knew,
knew he was making me into something I wasn’t intended to be.

Eyes opened and told by the beastly potter to look at his mottled creation,
the examination of me was to see faults and blow outs.
Every surface of this poor vessel was covered in pinholes and craters,
every inch of me made of blistering mistakes.
Every scratch in the face that was supposed to image its True Creator was
a reminder of the woe upon the clay who strived against its Potter in the beginning.
Speckling across every space was proof of the contamination in me,
flecks of burning anger like hot blush, and stains the color of enmity and strife.
The vandalization of the enemy struck every surface, marring the original creation,
filling up the vessel’s hollow inside with pain and grave defeat and offensive intention.

What a horrid disfigurement the deceitful potter made of me.
So far was I from my Designer’s original desire.
In a world I thought beautiful and full of art and love, I had lost
a real Beauty and True Love.
I had declared to my Potter, “Your design is unsightly!”
and in turning to the brutal beast, I had become lost.

How can clay regard its Potter with such disdain?
How can the thing made say of its Maker, “I am not Yours.”
And with what grace is that ungracious clay redeemed and received
by the Potter who would find it good and holy to remake it into a new thing.

What then of the flecks of anger and stains of exhausted striving?
What of the broken pieces, warped and defaced into damnation?
If the vessel is poured out, emptied of pain and offense and deathly resolution,
what shall be left of it?

Oh, to be taken into the fold of His hands, wrapped up with new clay,
refreshed by cool, ever-flowing water. Cleansing every impurity and washing out the stains,
changing the overworked, mottled shape of what I’d become into fine china,
vitrified into elegant porcelain and vindicated of the marks of the beastly deceiver.
Empty and thrown back onto the wheel, with gentle and attentive hands,
the Potter will rework me, shape me until He sees that I am Good.

And to be wrapped in new, Divine Clay,
to be vitrified into fine white china,
Good, and one with my Potter, I shall become.