The Potter, Part 2

The biblical allegory of the potter and the clay appears numerous times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Last week we explored most of the Old Testament incidents in which faithless Israel is warned of the coming judgement in the form of the Babylonian captivity (Isa. 41:25), explanation of Israel’s required repentance and recognition of absolute dependence and faith in God’s hand of mercy with no other recourse or control over individual lives…..

Read more

Share:

The Potter, Part 1

I once took a pottery class at our local community college where I learned about hand-thrown, wheel-thrown, and tooling techniques for work with clay. I also employed several glazing and firing techniques during my class. While I didn’t have to create the clay myself, I did do some clay amendment to recycle my badly made pots. It involved a lot of time under water followed by extensive kneading of the clay to reestablish cohesive and plastic…..

Read more

Share:

A Template for Prayer

Parts of David’s prayer of thanksgiving in 1 Chronicles. 16:8-36 for the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem are woven into several of the Psalms (with minor variations in Psalm 47, 48, 96, 105, and 106). Its antiquity, Old Testament placement, and focus on Israel’s history does not rule out its use in our own prayers. In five parts it gives us a contemporary template, readily adaptable to inform our worship today:

Exhortation…..

Read more

Share:

Holy Spirit Calling

Friends of mine celebrated their fifty-eighth wedding anniversary this week. They have been missionaries their entire life together. They served in France for a number of years working with a variety of evangelistic efforts alongside local churches, including literature distribution, special evangelistic events, and a Christian Coffee House. After that, they lived in the United States and worked as administrative personnel for a global missionary organization for more than a decade. Then they spent some years in…..

Read more

Share: