The Aching In My Heart

I have this aching in my heart.

With every beat I feel the friction.

Every pulse like a drum in my chest.

Lub-Dub-ouch Lub-Dub-Ouch

This aching in my heart haunts me every night

Each beat like a punch, taking the strength from my lungs

Every pulse, like electricity coursing through my body

Lub-Dub-ouch Lub-Dub-Ouch

This pain afflicting my heart screams to be remedied

An echo of panic in my mind with every contraction

Each beat, like the ominous chirps of a bomb counting down.

That ache in my heart, that cannot be ignored,
But sometimes I convince myself its gone.

Wish it was gone, hope it's gone, pray it's gone.

It defines and alters every perameter of my life

One day my heart will be at peace. No more painful beating

No more aching, just PEACE

Emptiness-

In irony someone recently told be how empty their life feels currently.
How ironic right?
The irony lies in the fact that I was feeling the same way.
For exactly the same reasons.
But I don't believe they knew this.
In prayer for this person, and myself, God gave me understanding.
Applicable towards 'our' kind of emptiness.
In the parable of a pot being made by a potter.

The Steps involved in a pot:
1 - Get a lump of cold hard clay
2 - Knead it, warm it up, get it ready
3 - Secure it on the wheel
4 - Center its mass
5 - Put force into it, shape it, and mold it to a shape
6 - Dry it and glaze it
7 - Fire it
8 - Use it [after it cools]

The understanding applies in the following way.
A pot can only feel empty when its a pot.
Right?
Obvious...
Maybe not when you're a pot.
As a lump of clay being kneaded, cleansed, spun and shaped, the clay is not empty.
It is simply clay.
Duh.

As the form and purpose take form however the clay begins to feel its calling.
Its purpose.
What where once dreams are suddenly tangible.
A formless mass fantasizing of holding water, to quenching thirst, and spreading life.
Those dreams are now more than that, they are now the nature of the pot itself.
Now the dreams are of sanctification.
Of being used.
Fulfilling its purpose.
It's a pot right?
But its not being used as a pot

It's purpose is to hold water...
But it's dry.

It's designed to give quenching water to dry lips...
But it's dry.

It's desire is to spread life...
But it's dry.

Dry and lifeless.

Longing to be used
Waiting to be used
Praying to be used
Looking for any instance to just be used!



Questions begin.
Am I still wet?
Do I need to dry more?
Have I been glazed?
Haven't I been through the fire?

The white hot, cleansing, nothing impure left behind sort of fire.
The fire of the kiln.
God's fire.
Where even clay glows white hot with God's purifying heat.

Even after a piece of clay acquires the shape of a pot, its not really ready to be a pot.
I mean, I look like a pot.
I'm made of what pots are supposed to be made of.Sure, everyone calls it a pot.
I even call myself a pot.
She calls herself a pot.

Which ever step we may be in, who knows, maybe we're cooling off in the kiln.
Sitting in the sun to dry, still wet and more vulnerable than we were as a lump of clay.
Standing on the shelf, waiting to be sold.
Maybe still on the wheel, the potters hands still wrapping us, shaping us.
Most exciting of all, maybe we're under a faucet as God's hand turns on the water.

Where ever we are, we are in God's hands.
Under His supervision.
Being formed, prepared, sent out.
Or maybe we're about to be used and we don't even know it.

If we are willing to serve, God will use us.
He will use us when we're ready.
He's given us a purpose, a passion, the ability,
He's given us His ability.
We'll be used in beautiful ways to show God, to give life

We'll be filled with the Spirit
We'll pour out the Spirit on dry souls, quenching their thirst.
We'll be carried, full of life, to places once scourged by drought and rainless days.

There, there we will spread the life within us,
Being filled continually,
Pouring ourselves out upon the heart-seeds of the lost, dead, and dying,
Giving life, not giving cause its ours to give.
Giving because its been given to us.

Because after all, that is what we were made to do....

Isaiah 29:16-

You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it,
“You did not make me”?
Can the pot say to the potter,
“You know nothing”?

Isaiah 45:9-

“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker,
those who are nothing but potsherds
among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
‘What are you making?’
Does your work say,
‘The potter has no hands’?

Isaiah 64:8-

Yet you, LORD, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.