Interesting.  We are likened to clay jars—the common, the ordinary.  Clay itself brings to mind the story of our beginning.    Paul’s imagery is intentionally loaded I think.  We are the fragile vessels.  He goes on to say  that death is at work in us, our outer nature that is wasting away, and an earthly tent that will be destroyed.    The message is clear ~ being made of clay holds us vulnerable.

But God doesn't leave us that way, unprotected.  Though we are just jars of clay, we have this treasure inside of us, we carry the life of Jesus.  So that while death is at work in us, life is as well.  Though our outer nature is wasting away, Paul says our inner nature is being renewed day by day.  This is the treasure. 

Last February I was in Thailand with a group from Wilshire Baptist Church.  Our mission was to build a house out of clay. Now, my first thought was, you can’t build a house out of dirt, especially when the rainy season comes. At first we didn’t think it was possible.  We were mixing the dirt from the ground and water and making clay bricks.   When these clay bricks dried, they didn’t just fall apart (well, not most of them).  Because what we had added to them were rice husks, the material left after threshing rice.  This straw was the cementing force, the matrix that held the clay together.  And then, as each brick was laid, the structure grew stronger and stronger.    Funny enough, this clay-like structure that I didn't think would last the test of time is still standing. 

The power of Christ is the matrix, the sustaining force of our clay-like being.  This Lent, I am ever aware of my clay-like substance, but this passage speaks again to me (and hopefully to you), encouraging us that we're not going to crumble even with some cracks.  In fact, those broken places in us, just as in a piece of pottery, let in light.  As Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” 

What sustains you in this season?