“But now, O LORD, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; and all of us are the work of Your hand.” – Isaiah 64:8
Scripture has many references to God working us, either as individuals or communities, as a potter works with a piece of clay. I think most people imagine working with clay as a form where the artist has complete control over the clay and the form that it will eventually take in the end, with little or no response from the medium itself.
I’m not sure how this works with other artistic expressions, but my experience with clay, especially working with figures, is that there is definitely a conversation which takes place between myself as the “artist”, and the medium I am working with my hands. The piece – the figure – responds to every movement I make in the clay. It begins to tell its own story as I shape it — the turn of a hand, the weight of the head, the expression in the eyes. It’s not that I have lost control, but I see things there that I might not have imagined when I started out.
Sometimes I see this happen when I am drawing, especially when I may be sketching as someone else speaks or teaches. A few scribbled lines begin to take shape into something more complex, communicating a story that I hadn’t explicitly set out to illustrate.
Questions for Artists:
As you create through your particular art-form, what are some ways that you find yourself responding to the “medium” – whether that is a physical medium, or something more intangible like music or story – and find that the art has its own story it is telling?
If we are, in fact, a kind of “clay” in God’s creative hands, following the story He is telling through us, where do WE fit into that process? Where does God’s infinite purpose mingle with our response?
As we create in each of our own beautiful ways, how do we allow ourselves to listen to our art, or perhaps more keenly, to the quiet voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to our imaginations through whatever medium we may be handling?