The Glass Vessel

A day on vacation turned into an unexpected revelation. Read on to find out how God used a piece of wood and some shards of glass to show me what a work of art YOU (and I) truly are!

I needed to get away. Just away. Where? Anywhere! Just away.

Don’t we all feel like that about right now? It has been six long months since COVID closed everything down. Working from home, staring at the same couple of walls, day after day seeming like the one before it, juggling work, and homeschooling, and elderly parents, and ill family members that we can’t even visit. Not being able to go out to the store without layered protection, no movies, no concerts…

I’ll stop rambling now. I digress…I needed to get away.

And so we did. We went to the mountains. The Great Smoky Mountains in Western North Carolina. Myself, my sister, my son, and my mom. We rented a two bedroom lake view apartment on the side of a mountain and we got away.

While away my ten-year-old found a brochure that was in the “what to do around here” area of our rented apartment. It was for a gem mine – run by Blue Earth Traders (https://www.blueearthtraders.com/). It is called Maggie Valley Rock Shop and Gem Mine to be precise. I wasn't at all surprised. Why wouldn’t a young boy want to dig in the dirt and find some cool rocks?

If you’ve never been to a place such as this, it is actually pretty cool. At this particular gem mine they had different sized buckets (at various prices) and you picked the one you wanted to purchase. You then sat down at the sluice with water streaming down like a small, contained creek. Next, you used a shovel to scoop the sand and dirt out of the bucket into a wooden box with screen mesh at the bottom. You put the box in the running water of the sluice and it fills the box and carries away the sand and what is left is gems. We got a couple of bags full of different gems in our bucket – obsidian, quartz, amethyst – even a geode with wonders locked inside.

After we were done we were looking around the rock shop and they had a lot of other cool things for sale. There were salt lamps and fossils and crystalline rock configurations and then something very unusual caught my eye ~ it was glass and wood together. It looked kind of like a vase with a wood base but something was different. I walked away a couple of times but I kept getting pulled back to that table and then I spoke to the gentleman who helped us with our bucket and he explained what I was looking at.

The base is a special type of wood from a Gamal tree in Indonesia. In Bali they use the roots of these trees as the base for glass blowing. They take recycled glass bits that the artisans collect and they heat them up to a molten state and then they use long pipes to blow the glass onto the root base. After the glass is cooled in water and polished up, the two pieces together make a work of art. A one-of-a-kind, never to be duplicated, true work of art.

Wow! Now that’s not something you hear about or see every day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJLL6Rj64xc

We walked around the other parts of the shop. My son wanted to buy some of the more unusual stones that he saw including one that, to him, looked like Jupiter. We even paid for our purchases but something took me back to that table with the Gamal root vessels. I really didn’t understand the profound pull that caused me to go back to the display, but I did go back, and I purchased one of the one-of-a-kind pieces of art.

That is when it hit me. That glass vessel – the one sitting on that base – the one that looked like an odd-shaped piece of glass that couldn’t even stand upright on its own – and that charred, but unchanged solid piece of wood underneath – that glass vessel was ME; that wood was my Lord, Jesus Christ! Together (but only together) we were a work of art! A one-of-a-kind, never to be duplicated, true work of art!

I can see the look on your face and I hear a lot of you saying, I don’t get it. Let me explain.

First off, those broken shards of glass? The ones that were recycled from trash and then heated up in a furnace so hot that it fused them back together into a molten red-hot blob? That was me. There was a point in my life when I thought I was one thing, had one purpose, but then ultimately ended up in pieces. But then by God's grace he gathered me up and I started delving into God’s word.

As it says in Jeremiah 23:28-29 [AMP]:

“The prophet who has a dream, let him tell his dream; but he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully…Is not My word like fire [that consumes all that cannot endure the test]? says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks in pieces the rock [of most stubborn resistance]?”

God’s word took the broken pieces and melted them down. His breath blew into me and heated me up to the point where I was willing and able to be molded by him.

But the base – that base is the most important part.

My favorite scripture, the one that I rely on the most is also in Jeremiah:

“For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome.” [Jeremiah 29:11 AMP]

That my savior would die on wood for me, that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that nothing I do would ever be a surprise or hurt Him…well, that IS the wonder. That the wood is made from the root of a tree that nourishes life; that there are crevices and knobs and nooks and dips and folds on that piece of wood, well, that is THE plan ~ that is the plan that he has for ME.

And my plan is not the same as your plan, or your parent’s plan, or your friends’ plans. It’s unique. It’s one-of-a-kind. It’s a work of art. Yes, heat is required to make the glass pliable, and it takes a special artisan, one who knows exactly what to do, to craft it, but at the end of the day the wood is what shapes the vessel.

More importantly, the wood also serves as the base, the foundation, for that piece of art. Yes, the glass can always be removed from the base but it looks strange standing on its own. It's nice but it’s kind of wonky and lopsided. It's not exactly the work of art that it was meant to be. You can also take the base of wood by itself but there is no context to that particular piece of wood. It looks old and kind of dark. It’s not exactly the work of art that it was meant to be either. HOWEVER, when you put those two pieces together and they fit like a glove. Now, we have something special. Those two pieces together is what makes people stop and take notice. Those two pieces together make people turn around and get inexplicably drawn back to look at it again and again. Now, THAT is the definition of a masterpiece!

Even better than all of that, there is that HOPE that Jeremiah mentioned. What if that glass vessel breaks? Well, Jesus will always be there to gather up the pieces, reignite them with His word, and mold them right back into the shape that they were meant to be because, after all, the base didn’t change. Maybe the shape or the edges are not exactly the same afterward, BUT after any serious trial or tribulation, one serious enough to shatter you to pieces, are we ever truly the same thereafter? Not really. Yes, you are still you but you are different. That doesn't change the fact that God's plan (that wood base) is still there, unchanged, just as it was before.

The purpose behind a young woman’s attendance at a GR8FUL Workshop is to open the door of the furnace and help to stoke the flame so that God will have enough fuel to do his work in her. I want YOU, and every girl, to know, believe and see the work of art, that masterpiece, that one-of-a-kind you that God always intended. After all, you are the daughter of the King!

#4EVERGR8FUL,

Rebecca