Just As I Am

Yet, O LORD, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all the work of thy hand. Isaiah 64:8

This single verse sets forth a paradigm of vast understanding. It states simply the relationship of God to man. He is our Father. Jesus would later teach his disciples to pray "Our Father who art in heaven". Paul states in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit interceeds in our hearts crying out to "Abba, Father" which is the Aramaic equivalent of "Daddy". The familiar form of address would almost seem out of place in most church services today..."Dear Daddy", but that is exactly the sort of intimacy that the Bible suggests that God wants with his created.

Secondly, it tells us what we are.....dirt. Genesis proclaims that man was made from the dust of the earth. The name given to the first created human, Adam, means "red man" which is symbolic of man's origin. We are clay that gets molded during our lifetime. We don't get to choose how we are molded. That is the role of the potter. The potter is God. Sometimes, pain and suffering are the tools he uses to shape and mold us into what we need to become. Lament and joy are both present in the molding process. We don't get the answers to all of our questions as to "why" because God is still in control.

Which brings me to the third point. We are "all" the work of thy hand. Pharoh had a part to play in molding the Hebrew nation. Four hundred years of slavery is not my cup of tea; but, it worked for God. The prophet Jeremiah wrote in 27:6:

"Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnez'zar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him."

I have always wondered how a faithful Jew felt who had watched the temple being sacked in Jerusalem by an uncircumsized foreign king named Nebuchadnez'zar (think Saddam Hussein). Then later his own prophets would state that God refers to Nebuchadnez'zar as "my servant". In much the same way, how is it that an obscure corporal in a defeated German army later becomes the Furher of one of the strongest military nations of the world (Germany) whose aim is to wipe out the Jewish religion from the face of the earth? Without the holocaust, there would not be a nation today known as Israel. Israel was voted into existence by the United Nations because of the world's collective guilt in allowing 6 million people to die in concentration camps during World War II. Did God use the holocaust for his purpose? If the scripture declares "we are all the work of thy hand", I think the answer has to be "yes". It is a difficult concept to understand how bad things that happen to good people fit into the God's soverign will. Ultimately, we can only accept such a point of view by faith.