The Potter and the Clay

The clay that you buy in the shops for making pots is not the same clay that you can dig out of the ground. It contains added things, which make it easier to work, stronger when it is fired and it makes a more delicate pot with greater beauty. Bone china and porcelain are clay with other things added. In Old Testament times the potters used to break up pots that had been fired and add that to the clay, (I like to think that they broke the most perfect pot that had been made), but it would have to be really broken for it to work. They had to grind it into powder, and only then would it be added to the clay.
The parable explains that if a potter found a lump of hard clay in the pot that he was making, the lump would not have this broken powder inside it. The whole pot would have to be started again. I think we do not take this very important parable far enough. The offending lump in the clay is not a nasty piece of foreign material, but a piece of clay - something that should be there but does not have this all-important broken powder. It is not an evangelical parable but a pastoral one, explaining about Christians who have Jesus inside them, but have been keeping a little secret part of themselves to themselves, and away from Jesus.
It does not have to be sin that they keep. They do not trust Him or want to keep a little bit of their old nature to themselves.
The pot that this lump is in is usually a lovely pot and everyone is very proud of it, and would be disappointed if they found that there was an ungodly bit deep inside it. But, as sure as God is God, He will work the wonderful magic of love upon His pot, that He has made. When the pot is secretly humbled and fed up with the ungodly lump, and wants to be totally His, and with the pots permission, He will cause the whole pot to collapse. He will reform it in a day. The pot will be exalted, not depressed, because it has done what is right and submitted to the God that loves it so much.