From Mom-Mom

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 9:10 AM, Mary Nelle wrote:

Thank you, Julie. for the teacup parable. Simple but profound. It started me thinking about the way God has taught me different things over the years as he was molding and shaping, and polishing. (Still is, actually!)

1. How at 18 our lovely, self-satisfied, safe, comfortable family was shattered when my brother died in WW 2 in June, and the following November, my Dad. I remember how I clung to the Psalms, and verses like, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." (His accident was stepping back on a loose board.) I was finding out the miraculous, living, power of the Scripture.

2. Learning to get along with a husband who was so totally different from me. Having to learn I couldn't have it my way all the time, and to try to live to make another person happy, not me, me, me.

3. Shelleys's birth with an abnormal hand, and finding out God could be wonderfully sufficient for her, and in the process bless us all.

4. Christopher's diagnosis of autism, and then Jeanne's breast cancer. Oh my, God was doing so much shaping and molding in so many ways, (too many lessons to list), but finding God make His presence so real and so loving you could almost touch Him--how could your faith and confidence in Him not grow?

5. Shelleys' divorce----again so much pain, but so amazing how God once again was sufficient, and powerful to work it out for good in so many ways, with a minimum of "scars" --- "beauty for ashes" instead. Makes us pray hard for Mary--we know what God can do!

6. Then the more recent "shaping and molding"--Ward's illness and then my coping alone --- Oh my, the faithfulness of God is overwhelming-- defies finding the language for it all, as David says, "Some things are too lofty for me" ---"How wonderful are your thoughts and your ways past finding out"..

Jeanne's RA diagnosis, Of course, mine and Shelley's big C in one year---

It is hard to analyze just what God was doing in each of these cases, and how he is still working on that teacup-- but it was good to anticipate that He is making something beautiful out of that pitiful lump of clay, as only He can. I surely can't, no matter how hard I may try.

Love, MOM

I'm a Little Tea cup

I'm a Little Tea Cup

Love this story or not, you will not be able to have tea in a tea cup again without thinking of this.

There was a couple who took a trip to England to shop in a beautiful antique store to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. They both liked antiques and pottery, and especially teacups.

Spotting an exceptional cup, they asked "May we see that? We've never seen a cup quite so beautiful."

As the lady handed it to them, suddenly the teacup spoke, "You don't understand. I have not always been a teacup. There was a time when I was just a lump of red clay. My master took me and rolled me, pounded and patted me over and over and I yelled out, "Don't do that. I don't like it! Let me alone," but he only smiled, and gently said, "Not yet."

Then WHAM! I was placed on a spinning wheel and suddenly I was made to suit himself and then he put me in the oven. I never felt such heat. I yelled and knocked and pounded at the door. "Help! Get me out of here!" I could see him through the opening and I could read his lips as he shook his head from side to side, "Not yet."

When I thought I couldn't bear it another minute, the door opened. He carefully took me out and put me on the shelf, and I began to cool. Oh, that felt so good! "Ah, this is much better," I thought.

But, after I cooled he picked me up and he brushed and painted me all over. The fumes were horrible. I thought I would gag. "Oh, please, stop it, stop, I cried." He only shook his head and said, "Not yet."

Then suddenly he puts me back in to the oven. Only it was not like the first one. This was twice as hot and I just knew I would suffocate. I begged. I pleaded. I screamed. I cried. I was convinced I would never make it. I was ready to give up. Just then the door opened and he took me out and again placed me on the shelf, where I cooled and waited and waited, wondering, "What's he going to do to me next?"

An hour later he handed me a mirror and said, "Look at yourself." And I did. I said, "That's not me. That couldn't be me. It's beautiful. I'm beautiful!"

Quietly he spoke: "I want you to remember. I know it hurt to be rolled and pounded and patted, but had I just left you alone, you'd have dried up. I know it made you dizzy to spin around on the wheel, but if I had stopped, you would have crumbled. I know it hurt and it was hot and disagreeable in the oven, but if I hadn't put you there, you would have cracked. I know the fumes were bad when I brushed and painted you all over, but if I hadn't done that, you never would have hardened. You would not have had any color in your life. If I hadn't put you back in that second oven, you wouldn't have survived for long because the hardness would not have held. Now you are a finished product. Now you are what I had in mind
when I first began with you."

The moral of this story is this: God knows what He's doing for each of us. He is the potter, and we are His clay. He will mold us and make us and expose us to just enough pressures of just the right kinds that we may be made into a flawless piece of work to fulfill His good, pleasing and perfect.

So when life seems hard, and you are being pounded and patted and pushed almost beyond endurance; when your world seems to be spinning out of control; when you feel like you are in a fiery furnace of trials; when life seems to "stink", try this.

Brew a cup of your favorite tea in your prettiest tea cup, sit down and think on this story and then, have a little talk with the Potter.

God Bless You!