DAY 255

JARS OF CLAY – MADE FOR ETERNITY

Proverbs 10, 11 & 12 and 2 Corinthians 4

As we completed reading chapter nine, we came to the end of the introductory section of Proverbs. Starting today, we come to the beginning of what will be a long list of pithy sayings. For me, visually, the best way to read these is with a Bible that has them printed in a way where you can clearly see the start and stop of each saying. If they are printed in paragraph form they, at least for me, seem to just run on into each other.

Today for example these lovely proverbs: Like vinegar to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes, so are the lazy to their employers or Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without good sense or Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. There are some that are fun, some that sting but make sense, and some that are soothing…enjoy them.

2^nd Corinthians today is again full of wonderful prose.

Verses 1-6 speak of proclaiming the Gospel, verses 7-12 speak of “these jars of clay” that don’t give up, but present the gospel with their physical bodies bearing persecution, and then verses 13-18 looks to the future. Do you look to the future, the future of eternal life?

C.S. Lewis wrote sometime between 1943 and 1945, in his work Miracles the following: “I suspect that our conception of Heaven as merely a state of mind is not unconnected with the fact that the specifically Christian virtue of Hope has in our time grown so languid. Where our fathers, peering into the future, saw gleams of gold, we see only the mist, white, featureless, cold, and never moving.”

How much colder, how much more featureless is heaven in our minds some 70 years later. In our Western world we have so much in the way of material possessions, and we seem so much to want to hold onto to living in this world. Today in 2^nd Corinthians we read, ” 16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” These words, do they stir us, do they move us to looking towards that great horizon of hope…to “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

What is this “eternal weight of glory?” I suggest we ponder it. I suggest we look forward to it. Because whether we like it or not we are “jars of clay” and yet in these fragile, easily broken vessels, we are made to proclaim eternity and live for it.