God wants to make the very best He can of each of His children. He puts us on His wheel, and subjects us to the discipline which He deems most likely to secure our greatest blessedness and usefulness. But alas! How often He finds a marred vessel left on His hands when He desired and sought perfect beauty and strength! This is through no failure on His part, but because some bubble of vanity or grit of self-will has hindered Him.

When this has been the case, He does not cast us utterly away but puts us afresh on the wheel and “forms us into another pot.” If He cannot do what He desired at first, He will still make the best of us; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Yield yourselves afresh to God. Confess that you have marred His work. Humbly ask that He should make you again, as He made Jacob again and Peter and John and Mark.

There is simply no limit to the progress and development of the soul which is able to meet God with a never-faltering “Yes.” Be very prompt to obey all that He may impress upon you as being His holy will. Let the lifelike clay in the potter’s hands be plastic to the Maker’s touch!

The potter worked at his task With patience, love and skill. A vessel, marred and broken, He altered again to his will. It was blackened, bent and old But with traces of beauty left, So he worked, this mender of pottery, To restore the chamber left, Till at last it stood transformed And he viewed it with tender eyes, The work of his hands and love, This potter, patient and wise.

I know a Mender of broken hearts, And of lives that are all undone; He takes them all, as they come to Him And He loves them, every one. With patience, love and skill That surpasses the knowledge of men, This Master Potter gathers the lost And restores to His image again.

O Lover of folk with broken lives, O wonderful Potter Divine, I bring my soul for Thy healing touch; In me, let Thy beauty shine.

There is no type of failure that He has not taken hold of and remade.