You're Already Amazing: Earthen Vessels

Back in the beginning of March, I was invited to review Holley Gerth's new book, You're Already Amazing. Life intervened, and although I read the book immediately, I'm just now getting to the writing of the review. This is part 1 of a 3 part series on this simply beautiful book about our position in Christ.

My kids love to play "Africa". I find ground up rocks all over the yard, pulverized into dust. I look down at the red clay and I remember the Lord God formed man out of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). We're all sons and daughters of Adam, sons and daughters of dust, sons and daughters blessed with the breath of life only God can breathe.

We all start as terracotta, baked earth. It's the simplest way to turn dust into something useful. Clay pots baked at a modest temperature, over fires, in pits, in some of the oldest fireplaces and furnaces known to man. Under the right conditions, terracotta can last a long time. It doesn't crumble easily.

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The only pottery prior to the 14th century, terracotta was used not only to make pots, bowls, and other household items, but also armies of sculptures, like the famous terracotta warriors of the Qin dynasty of China's first emperor in 210 B.C.

But we aren't sculptures. We're not solid. We're not made to last. 


We are hollow. We're pots. The kind you'll only find shards of when you excavate an ancient civilization. If you live your life like a sculpture, placing your trust in the solidity and beauty of humanity, you will always wonder at your hollowness. The hollowness of your relationships. The hollow and fragile nature of your own health. The hollowness you feel inside when it is just you, alone in the dark with your fears and your insecurities.

We weren't made simply as a work of art, to bring beauty to this world. We were made to be filled up, like a flower pot.

We have a higher purpose - and it's a strange one. It's to bring glory to God through our hollowness, our brokenness.

Paul says we hold the treasure of life in earthen vessels. The book of Job reminds us that we live in houses of clay with foundations of dust. Don't we all begin as terracotta, formed by the Potter out of the dust of the earth, fit for a purpose, but weak and easily broken?

Something magical happens when you glaze terracotta. The porous surface is bound to the glaze by the higher heat of a kiln, and all the pockmarks and weak places the pot was born with are filled and made strong by the glaze. Like the furnace of faith, the heat hardens the glaze and strengthens the pot in an irreversible process that will forever change the pot. Holley Gerth reminds us that, in Christ,

You're not only amazing. You're enough. You're beautiful. You're wanted. You're chosen. You're called. You've got what it takes...not just to survive, but to change the world.

Faith isn't easy. While the glaze protects us from the water damage of rainstorms of life, Satan can still chip away at the beautiful surface of a glazed pot. If we allow him leeway while we struggle to weather the storms, he'll chip away with fervor.

One of the great mysteries - great wonders! - of life is that God will use any cracked pot. In Paul's words, 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 we are under fire, it is common for those around us to marvel at the strength we show. During the hardest storms of my life, when I'm left wondering how I'm staying afloat, and my strength and confidence are in shreds, I am at my ugliest, and I have lost sight of my purpose in Christ, I've grown sick of hearing "how do you do it?" or "you're so strong" or "your faith must be enormous". To wear the admiration of others with any pride would be a complete farce. I know beyond any shadow of doubt that the strength I'm apparently demonstrating does not come from within. If I am able to walk through the trial with any grace at all, it is because of Christ's strength and not my own. The suffering Christian knows deeply the truths of Job 4:19, and marvels that God would ever find glory through the faltering faith of the suffering.

How great the patience of God! Look upon man in his life. The very foundation of that cottage of clay in which man dwells, is in the dust, and it will sink with its own weight. We stand but upon the dust. Some have a higher heap of dust to stand upon than others but still it is the earth that stays us up, and will shortly swallow us up. Beauty, strength, learning, not only cannot secure them from death, but these things die with them; nor shall their pomp, their wealth, or power, continue after them. Shall a weak, sinful, dying creature, pretend to be more just than God, and more pure than his Maker? No: instead of quarrelling with his afflictions, let him wonder that he is out of hell. (from Matthew Henry's commentary on Job 4:19)

Sometimes, in the intensity of life's greatest battles, whole sections of pottery are sheared off, and we are left broken. You may be like me, with large sections of your life broken off by disease or hardship. You can't see your beauty anymore, you doubt you are useful for much of anything, certainly no longer fit for service of the most high King. Gerth addresses this in her book as well:

You're not the "it" girl...it's a good thing. When we look at the kingdom of God, there aren't "it girls" (or guys). There are only "is girls". God looks at you and says, "She is loved, accepted and valued. She is created just the way I wanted her to be.

And the amazing thing is, even if we're reduced to one shard of our original beauty, the curve of the pot that God created will still cradle a handful of dirt and plants will grow from that soil. Whether suffering has stripped you of ministry opportunities, career, physical strength or beauty, you're still fit for God's purposes for your life.

In the end, what He wants most is simply us. Our hearts. Our dreams. Our days. Then what we do with our skills is just a natural response - and ordinary activities such as cooking or cleaning become just as sacred as leading a church or going on a mission trip. (Gerth, Who Am I, Really? p. 33)

Letters to Aaron: The horizon to my wanderings

I wake up in the pre-dawn, the furniture just becoming visible in our dark bedroom. This home in the country is as quiet in these early hours as you are, my silent and stoic, my granite shore, my unmoving one. Ever since we first met, I sensed the solidity of you, the way you stayed when all else on the landscape shifted. We talked about faith, and your love of the Catholic Church you grew up in burned fierce. You were a man to stay, and to change from within, not one to scatter and scurry away like so many others when they find that their beliefs don't align with the world they live in.

I look out the window and see the moon dropping like a yellow gem toward the dark horizon, the sun lighting her in apricot hues against the midnight blue sky. I am the moon, running across the sky and always in motion; you the horizon, fixed and permanent.



You tolerate my moveability, we joke about my favorite book, A Moveable Feast. And while you've come to understand why I am this way, you don't join me. You have the same convictions, the same beliefs, the same sureity, the same politics, the same way of romancing. You haven't changed much since we joined hands and hearts 10 years ago. Through my cancer, Amy's illness, my depression...you've been an unwavering Point North for our entire family. For all around us who observe our hardships and our family's response. While pain erodes you, it doesn't move you. My entire being shifts under the weight, and I lose my grip on the earth and drift out to sea on pain. But the waves of Truth bring me back to your shores, and I curl roots into your rocks and hang on for dear life.

I trust you because you are trustworthy. You are led by the One who is unmoveable. You hold strong and solid when others cannot. You remind me endlessly of the strength of our Rock, and make yourself like him, a boulder, a cliff, chipped off the great Rock of Ages who rules the tides and the torrents of our everyday.

Sometimes I try to change you. I think that, by growing my mossy roots on your pocked granite surface, maybe you are changed. But you stay the same. You resist my pell-mell ideas and don't let yourself race to chase the rapid beating of the drums in my mind. You stand there, still, waiting for me to return. And when I do, the sweetness of your strong and silent arms, always welcoming, but never chasing, that grounds me and brings me "home". In spirit; in body; in faith.



Linked up to the Marriage Letters of Joy, Scott, Amber and Seth.

When you can't take any of the credit

I was awake for 44 hours. My eyes burned, my body ached, and my spirit wilted. I had submitted my dissertation, and it failed. I had one last chance to edit the 100+ pages to suitable quality. I didn't have the strength for it. I was horribly exhausted, haunted by stress-related chest pain, my fingers tremulous from the long hours typing. 

And then God gave me the strength to stay awake for 44 hours and finish my work.

He took me to the absolute end of my physical, intellectual, and emotional limits.

He took me there so that I would know, beyond a doubt, that the result was totally in His hands. That it wasn't my smarts or my tenacity. That it was a gift.

And so I can say, with utter humility,

I PASSED.


And God gets all the credit.

The promise of grace 

And You lead us into freedom 

We're bound in Your love 

And all sin has been forgotten 

At the foot of the cross 

Where our ransom has been given 

If God is for us who can be against us 

Who can be against our God 

You give life to us all 

And you breathe on us Your spirit 

You go before us, 

Father, you protect us 

Father, you provide for us all 

Your Word is a shelter strong within 

My portion and my deliverance

(You Are the Lord, Jeremy Camp & Matt Maher)

*the portion of the dissertation I just successfully completed was the written portion. There is an oral exam portion as well, next Tuesday at 11 a.m. (CST). If you would pray for my continued strength as I prepare for this, and for God's will and power to be on display next Tuesday?

Coping with the everyday after bad news

I can't hear the words to music. It seems like such a small inconvenience, but, to someone who loves music as I do, who goes through each day to an internal soundtrack of songs, it's a pretty big deal. My thoughts drift to hearing aids. I wonder if they would help. At this point, I don't even really know what my long-term options are as we still aren't sure why I've lost some of my hearing or whether or not it will come back.

I look at the hearing aid case at the doctor's office, and I see some of them look just like earrings. So that's pretty cool.

My counselor asks how I'm handling all of this, and I guess I am handling it well. My emotions are raging (thanks in part to the steroids), but I'm living with my emotions without freaking out or reverting to my old habits of harmful coping skills. I haven't said the "c" word in front of the kids. I know it will be hard for them on the 21st, if the MRI shows cancer and I go right to surgery. But at this point, just a week after we heard "remission", I think it would be worse to worry about it for the intervening two weeks. So, to some extent, I'm dealing with the darkest of the worries on my own.

I crave your prayers - that my hearing might be restored, that they will find and treat the cause, that I don't have another kind of cancer. Thank you for all the love you've poured out on me over the past week since this trial hit. I am blessed more than you know.

Try, try again

The hand clearly points to the desired action.

He tries rolling it there.

That doesn't work.

The hand decides to demonstrate desired action.

He tries to drop it straight in this time.

Now he takes another go at rolling it in.

Ugh, still no luck!

Maybe I should just give up.

Maybe putting my shoe in the hole is good enough.

Oh, I've almost got it! How invigorating!

Maybe kicking it will work?

Nope, that didn't work either. Shucks!

We do this ourselves, so often, especially in our relationships and with God. I often know what is desired of me, but I lack skill, confidence, or motivation to just do it. I end up running in circles around what's being asked of me, trying every human skill I have to reach the goal. I forget that the author and finisher of my faith is my ultimate golf bag of tricks. He knows exactly how I'm going to get that ball in the hole, and He asks me to seek Him for the things I need to accomplish it: strength, confidence, and motivation. My mental health issues of the past six months have made me feel weak and helpless. But in that very place, He provides, comforts, and shines His holy light.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (I Corinthians 9:24-27)

...asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:9b-13)

Note from the wilderness

Close-up of crack in broken tire chock

 We don't think of ourselves as fragile. Especially as Christians. We're strong in the Lord, right? (Ephesians 6:10) Yet, over the whole span of scripture, we read of mighty people becoming broken so that they can serve God in amazing ways: Adam, afraid in his nakedness; Jacob, who wrestled with God, and limped always afterward; Abraham, whose health and vigor failed long before God granted him the promised son; the prophets who retreated to the wilderness to be fed by ravens as they had squandered their last bit of strength trying to carry God's message; the many people Jesus healed, the weakest, sickest, most shunned - the social misfits and pariah.

We are fragile. Sometimes we envision ourselves as warriors fit for battle, but there is always the thorn in the side (II Corinthians 12:7), the fact that God's greatness is made perfect in our weakness (II Corinthians 12:9).

This is a season of brokenness for me. I don't know what God has ahead. Frankly, I am too exhausted from the recent battles to even care much about what the future holds. I know He has a plan, and I'm sunk back in His arms just waiting for it to unfold. I am sure others who've struggled with depression know this feeling. Wishing there were heaven-sent ravens coming to feed you while you rest in the sand (I Kings 17:6).