3 Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. 5 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 6 O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel. 7 At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; Jeremiah 18:3-7
If man could learn one profound fact about God and His nature, he might find it far easier to follow His every counsel. GOD is the utmost SOVEREIGN. Nothing happens in Heaven or Earth that God does not have the power to either perform or forbid. We build our castles of sand with great care, but then comes the tide at God's command and washes all into oblivion. Our labors die as the fires on the distant dunes and are covered with the sands of time as that vain statue, Ozymandias (Shelley):
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away".
Our very names, a household treasure among friends and family, shall be as obscure as those works of the trifling `king of kings' Ozymandias, in two hundred years or less after our demise. We are merely the clay of the land that has produced us much like the corn of the fertile prairies and plains of America. Only that which we have deposited in the Bank of our Sovereign shall persist in value beyond our mortal days of fashioning by the Potter's Hands. If we stiffen our necks and hearts, He will simply mar the vessel and start anew to make another of better quality. Though the clay itself may be the same, the spirit shall be different, and it is the spirit of the soul that is its essence.
