Control
The American Dream says that you can shape your own destiny – but it seems Isaiah, and other prominent writers in the Bible, say someone else makes us who we are:
64:8 And yet, O Lord, you are our Father.
We are the clay, and you are the potter.
We all are formed by your hand.
So are we able to make our own future? Â Or are we simply chiseled into being by a force greater than us?
Let’s start with birth – you didn’t exactly ask to be born, but here you are. Â You didn’t have much say in your hair or eye color, or the color of your skin…but here you are nonetheless. Â But what about other factors – your intelligence? Â Your social status in life? Â Your income? Â The health of your marriage? Â Your own death? Â All these things get a little hazy when it comes to your real control.
We like to think we have control over our lives – in fact, in America, we’ve made that priority 1 — “Safety first!” they always say. Â We have scuttle home from our jobs in little boxes and slip unnoticed into a garage and pull the door down behind us. Â We lock our doors, and update our privacy settings on Facebook. Â We want to control what influences us – of course, this is not all coming from an unhealthy place – but it quickly engenders a sense that I am in complete control – and anything that established itself as an unwanted negative influence should be worked at removing; because I am in control.
The ancients had a good sense of balance when it comes to such things. Â Proverbs really pushes the idea life is what you make it – that doing good work will yield good results. Â Ecclesiastes might be the other extreme, that “everything we do is meaningless!”
And finally, Isaiah – a book and a prophet who had seen so much – the end of the Israelites, the exile, slavery, and the return of a beaten, demoralized people. Â He knows there are certain things we can’t “buckle up” for in this life – that safety cannot always come first.
It is in these moments we remember that we are completely out of control – that we are the satellite spinning wildly around a much bigger Center. That we are clay in someone else’s hands. Â This can be frightening…or it can be liberating!
It all depends what kind of Potter is in control.
