clay & molding

Way back when, in high school art class, I remember having a few sessions on clay and pottery. When we first got the clay it was literally this huge slab. We had to use string/wire to cut through the clay, cuz there was no way a knife would be able to make a dent in the thing. Even with the string/floss/wire, it was still quite the difficult to cut. So the substance being that dense and hard to cut, you can only imagine how much more difficult it was to mold.

First you had to warm up that huge slab of clay. This wasn't one of those put-it-in-the-microwave kind of warm ups. You really had to work with it. You had to get your hands in there, knead, pound, hammer, etc. just to get it to be workable. To get it to be moldable, you had to do even more kneading, pounding, etc. It was an insane workout on your arms and upper body. To add to it all, it took a lot of time.

Every class pretty much started with this tedious process of warming up your clay. Though it may not have been as difficult as the initial session when we first cut the clay, it was still necessary to knead and pound the mound of clay so that it was workable again, since it had cooled down and somewhat hardened from the last time.
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Been awhile since I've been on the blog scene. Life has been... well... life: ever-changing, ever-shifting, ever-growing. The past few months have been difficult to say the least. From illnesses, to family stuffs, to personal stuffs, and top that off with work, church, and everything else in between, it's been a bit of an insane rollercoaster.

And amidst all the chaos, I wonder how stubborn and hardened I must have been for God to have to go and lay down all these hard knocks just so I'd be moldable again. I know I'm stubborn at heart, always have been, probably always will be to some extent. In light of that self-awareness, I wonder how much harder I make it for God to teach because of that fact. Quite the amazed that He has yet to throw in the towel and say "Forget it. I'm done trying." I know I probably would have. Instead, He forges forward, working through the toughness and ever-patiently making slow progress, even if it's only little bits at a time.

Just some food for thought. :P