Ah, the smell of Play-Doh. Oh, the memories of…. rolling, shaping, twisting, turning, pressing and pulling. Can’t you just smell it? What am I making? Actually, nothing. Just enjoying working the Doh, which I have replaced with the “adult” version. Putty — therapy putty, to be exact. The kind they give you “for free” when you’re rehabbing an ailing hand or digit.
But I’ve graduated from rehab; now I am just playing. Like when I was a kid, except now I stop every now and then to admire my “work.” In its course it looks like:
- an alligator
- a snake
- an elephant
- a dragon
- a dragon eating its tail
- a dragon ashamed
- an embryo
- a heart
- a face, very old and wrinkled
- an eagle’s head or
- maybe a turtle
I like the turtle. I’ll keep him, I think.
So, I set him in his round, plastic therapy putty home. And at once he begins to melt, sadly and slowly re-shaping himself into the shape of his container. (That never happened with Play-Doh. It got hard and crusty, probably because I didn’t snap the cover on tightly.)
As he melts, my turtle begins looking suspiciously like a snail.
Ah well. Later I will shape it again. Into something completely new. My hands and fingers will know what to do. I will leave it completely up to them and to my imagination what it’s meant to be.
Do you suppose God is trying to tell me something? Just keep shaping. Just keep molding. Just keep modeling. But every now and then, take a look at what you’re creating — what we are shaping — together in your hands. Mine are resting on yours as you work.
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
~ Jeremiah 18:1-6
The clay I am in the master’s hands is something new each day. I don’t know what it will be, but my Creator does and my Creator is doing, day by day by day.