(A three minute read)

Sometimes when I seek God, I don’t get what I expect. Sometimes the Holy Spirit, who coaches me until I am ready to compete. Sometimes the Father, who overpowers me with His love and dominion. Sometimes Jesus appears, to teach – you guessed it – a word.

Sometimes when I seek God, He doesn’t come at all, in any of His persona. He leaves me alone. But this isn’t a lottery. I get what I need, and He knows what I need before I need it.

To use the cliché, His shaping and moulding makes me a vessel that can receive more of Him over time. Just as the potter’s lump of clay initially holds nothing, the artist’s hands slowly, patiently, draw it into the shape of a primitive cup.

Then, with more revolutions and more, the cup changes in size. It’s walls narrow and it grows taller. There’s no more material now than in the original lump, but it is given an inside and an outside. It has boundaries.

God shapes these boundaries in us, and as our insides grow larger, we can contain more of Him. In eternity, I’m a vessel that can receive all of Him. Here in the world, I have time and space limitations, but He has these grow, steadily, patiently.

In eternity, I’m a learner with the patience and obedience to sit at His feet. I learn. I worship. I grow. I change shape. I am filled. In the world, I’m a learner who can be impatient and disobedient, not necessarily from wilfulness, but from the very loud and real distractions presented by this life.

And so I go in circles on the potter’s wheel. No, it’s a carousel, and I reach for the brass ring that is Christ.

It’s His music playing as I go round and round. It’s His pony I am riding, and even though I move in a circle, I never quite come back to the same place. Like the water that is ‘never the same river flowing under the bridge’ the stream of my life is constantly moving, changing and growing.

From my belly will flow rivers of this living water. Christ promised it. I’m just a rock face. It’s the Lord Himself that tumbles out of me to water the plains below.