Jars of Clay

“Life is hard, and it might not get easier.” This is a line from a worship song we used to sing 30 years ago. The older I get, the more I feel the truth of that line. Yes, there is a lot of joy in my life; and I have been extremely blessed. But this past week has been a reminder of my weaknesses and the frailty of my human body. And as I have been preparing to speak to a group of women for the first time in 5 years, I have found it difficult to focus on what really matters and ignore the physical issues I’ve been facing. How I long for heaven the older I get!

But then, as has so often happened in my life, God’s Word spoke directly to me and into my situation. And since this was precisely the main point I was hoping to convey to the women I was speaking to last night – the power of God’s Word to change us – I don’t think it was a coincidence! “For the word of God is alive and active” (Hebrews 4:12a).

As I was reading the book of 2 Corinthians this weekend, I came across several verses that encouraged me to look beyond my present physical limitations or insufficiencies and to focus on God’s work in me. I don’t want to be physically weak, but my weaknesses are designed by God to make me rely not on myself but on him (2 Corinthians 1:9). As 2 Corinthians 3:5 says, ‘our sufficiency is from God”. And we are described in 2 Corinthians 4:7 as jars of clay – fragile and breakable – “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us”.

God’s Word always has a way of over-riding my emotions and replacing them with truth. As I limped through this week with less than stellar attitudes about my pain and weaknesses, two other verses from 2 Corinthians adjusted my thinking – which is the beginning of right reactions:

2 Corinthians 4:16 – “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

 

2 Corinthians 5:1 – “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

 

I may be a fragile and broken jar of clay on the outside, but God is working from the inside out to make me more like himself; and I will have a new body in heaven that will never wear out and never be weak again. Praise God that what I can see now is not all that there is! In the meantime, I can rest and take comfort in the truth that God’s power is made perfect in my weaknesses – and that his grace will be all I really need to face whatever lies ahead (2 Corinthians 12:9). And as that old worship song also says: “We believe in God, and we all need Jesus.”