I've only
interacted a few times with Ken Stegall, but I love him. Do you know
why? He makes me think. Think with me as Ken writes about a recent
experience:
I was
watching a fascinating documentary recently which interviewed four
Jewish men who had suffered and survived four years in a Nazi
concentration camp.
A number
of things struck me as I listened to all four of them tell about their
experiences. One of them was a lack of bitterness. They had been given
the opportunity to revisit the site of their horrific experience. This
visit provided the bulk of footage for the documentary. They walked
around the site and pointed out places where certain things had
happened. You can imagine the emotion as one of them pointed to an
exact spot where his mother and sister had stood waving — just before
they were put on a train headed for the gas chambers.
But almost
as fascinating were the comments from each man’s wife and/or children.
One of the wives’ comments stuck with me. She said, “He is like a piece
of pottery that was broken and glued back together.”
That
thought keeps returning to my mind. My first reaction was, maybe we’re
all like that to some degree. We try to mold our lives the way we want
them, and life comes along and shatters us. We try to pick up the
pieces and put our lives back together. Maybe we lost some pieces in
the process and had to find something different to fill in the holes.
Maybe we feel like we don’t look as good as we did before.
Or maybe .
. . we never did look as good as we thought we did and God needed us to
know that so He could, not just glue the pieces back together, but
remake us — into a vessel that He could use.
God sent
Jeremiah to the potter’s house where he watched the potter reshaping a
marred pot: “... so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as
it seemed best to him” (Jeremiah 18:4).
The truth is: all of our "pots" are broken because we all
struggle with sin (Romans 3:23).
But God still loves us
and wants to remake us into something beautiful: a recreation in the
likeness of Jesus, His Son (Ephesians 2:8-10; Galatians 4:19).
In order to accomplish this metamorphosis,
God gave His Son to die on the cross for our sins,
so that we can be
forgiven,
receive the gift of His Spirit, and enjoy the hope of eternal life with
Him in heaven.
God will
save
and remake those who will place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts
16:30-31), turn from their sins in
repentance
(Acts 17:30-31),
confess
Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are
baptized
(immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38). He will
continue to transform us into the likeness of His Son as we walk in the
light of His Word (1 John 1:7).
Something beautiful, something good
All my confusion He understood
All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife
But he made something beautiful of my life.
-- Songwriters: Guy Chambers and Robert Peter Williams
Ken's prayer is my own; I hope it's yours, too.
Lord, make us into the vessel you want us to be . . .
even if we must be broken.
Won't YOU place yourself in the hands of
the Wonderful Potter and entrust your life to Him through your trusting
obedience?
-- David
A. Sargent
* "Broken
Pottery" by Ken Stegall. Woodland Oaks church of Christ. The
Woodlands, TX. Stegall's article was shared in Preacher Stuff, edited
by Dr. Dan Williams of Harding University. 2/14/17.
David A. Sargent,
Minister
Church of Christ at Creekwood
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama 36695
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