Potter and Clay

I wanted to sit you down and ask you why. Wanted to strap you on a stool in one corner, straddle myself across a wooden chair in front of you, put my nose in your face and ask you why with a snarling growl. I wanted to interrogate you fiercely, question you till you went blue in the face, and present my multitude of death threats to you if you wouldn’t comply, wouldn’t simply- tell me why.

I had it all figured out. I would ask you for a ransom, demand your blood, or hurt myself before you- I know that would hurt you most.

I wanted to sit you down and ask you why.

“Why. Why is it like that? Why am I like this, at this stage in my life. Why do I take so long to understand something so basic at the hospital, why do I fumble, why do I try hard and yet… still fall so short. Why am I made like this. Why did I not get to know you earlier. Why are They smarter, faster, better. How come they got to know you first, and why didn’t I get to sing songs about you when I was a kid? ”

It isn’t fair. It wasn’t fair you gave other people a Larger Coin. And I had it all figured out. I would threaten you- ask for a ransom, demand your blood, or hurt myself- I know that would hurt you most.

So with my hands on your shoulders and my face in yours, I asked in exasperation, “Why is it that for all my efforts, I am not…”

And as I found myself at a loss for words, I saw you smiling back at me. It was that gentle smile of long ago, that smile you gave me when we first became friends. You smiled, and then finishing my sentence for me, said, “ Why are you not God, you mean?”


Somedays, don’t we all want to corner Him too.


And I, with my frowning brow and legs straddled roughly across my wooden chair, became speechless. I backed off, and as I watched your smile melt away the straps cuffed across your bloodstained hands, I buried my head into Your chest and started to cry.


Somedays, don’t we all want to ask Him why too.


Why am I made like this. Why is my Coin so small.


And perhaps, for all our ransom-and-blood demanding threats, we forget, that He has already paid the price. He’s paid it off, and still, we’ve cornered Him… right there.

He’s paid it off with a Coin given to us, a coin with two sides- faith and faithfulness. And all He’s asked of us is to use it well- to be faithful to do our best with what He’s given us, and to have faith in His gifts to us. He never asked for more, and who are we to question why another’s coin has a heftier value to it.

For from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. –Luke 12:48b

So He rose from his chair and wiped my tears away. And He put the Coin He once gave me right back into my pocket. “Be faithful to what I have given you, that is all I ask.”


And I stopped asking Him why, stopped comparing my Coin with somebody else’s, because it simply made no difference.



We had scones and tea this afternoon, and as usual, He foot the bill.

" It does not, therefore depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy… Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?"

-Romans 9:16, 20