"Canvas and Clay"

    
     I dabbled in painting when I was in high school and even went to our local community college on an art scholarship my senior year, but seriously, my abstract art would have made Picasso cringe. I loved the freedom that my instructors gave me to pretty much do whatever I wanted to do on the blank canvas and that is exactly what I did. That freedom of expression can best be summed up with the idea that there are no mistakes in art, just new opportunities to make the piece of art what it was originally intended to be before it was even started. From what I know about potters the same is true in this craft as well. We see a lump of clay the potter sees a beautiful piece of art that just hasn't been released from its confines yet. The job of the artist and the potter isn't to create an object in a color by number fashion, but more so in a free form approach. There is no such thing as a mistake in art and the same can be said about the life that God has given you to live. No mistakes.
     The Contemporary Christian singer songwriter Pat Barret has a new song out entitled "Canvas and Clay" which inspired me in writing today's FTM. In the song, Barret talks about how God made us with a purpose in mind and that purpose is ongoing, changing, and metaphorically being born anew each day. It is our responsibility to embrace the understanding that we have a purpose. Barret's words "You're the artist and the potter, I'm the canvas and the clay" reminds us that just as the artist makes what some would label a missed stroke on the canvas, the artist can only see a new direction for the piece of art. An addition to the original work that will only make it better than it was. Same with the potter, as the potter works with the clay on the wheel many times the original concept is altered by what could be mistaken as a mess up. Nothing could be further from the truth in the eyes of the potter. The clay is being formed and reformed in an ongoing process that isn't finished until the work is placed in the kiln and fired under immense heat and pressure. That's a whole other FTM in the making, but let's just say the heating process creates yet one more change in the original work, thus still working on the original piece of clay even under fire!
     What I need you to embrace from today's message is you are not a mistake. Your life's circumstances are not just by coincidence, there is a purpose for your life and thus there is a purpose for everything that happens in your life. When you see adversity, God sees an opportunity for growth. When you feel like a mistake, God sees you as an ever changing, always growing creation that has a purpose to serve. What we see as devastation God uses to make His creation exactly what it was intended to be from the first stroke on the blank canvas of our life.
     Our role in His creation of this masterpiece? It is our responsibility to never give up, to never think that a situation is final, but instead to trust that for every stroke of misfortune in our lives, there is an intentional outcome waiting to be released. Artists can't use erasers and such is the same in life. We can't change our past mistakes, errors, or misfortunes, and honestly, we don't need to think about that as an option. We need to allow God to use those mis-strokes to guide us to where we were intended to be. What others would see as a failure, we can choose to say to God, "You are the artist and the potter, we are your canvas and clay".
     Keep this in mind this week, you are never alone and God doesn't make mistakes! No matter how overwhelmed you may feel, or how devastated your life appears to be, if we will only trust in the knowledge that God has a purpose for each person's life, we will move forward working to release that masterpiece you were created to be.
"Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." Isaiah 64:8
Coach Carter