He's Not Done With You Yet
Written by Katie Klement
Artwork by Abby Westendorf
When I was 9 or 10 years old, I learned this story, and it has stuck with me ever since:
"There was a potter who had a lump of clay. He pressed and shaped this clay all day, and the clay cried “That hurts!” To this the potter responds “Not yet.” After that the potter put the clay on a wheel and spun it around and around and the clay cried “That hurts, I’m dizzy!” But the potter responded, “Not yet.” Then once the spinning stopped, the potter put the clay into an oven, it was very hot. The clay cried “It’s hot!” The potter looked into the oven and said “Not yet.” Finally the potter took the clay out of the oven, just to turn around and put it back in a hotter oven! “Ow! It hurts!” cried the clay. The potter responded “Not yet.” Finally the potter took the clay out of the oven and held up a mirror for the clay to see. The teacup cried “Look, I’m beautiful!” The potter then says to the teacup “I had to make you go through all of that, so that you would become this. If I wouldn’t have molded and formed you you would still be a lump of clay, if I wouldn’t have thrown you in the fires you wouldn’t have been frail and broken too easily.”
The original story is longer, you can google it later (author unknown). This story has meant a lot to my mom, my sister, and I over the years. It showed me that when I was going through all the valleys, God was still with me.
When I was 9, I moved from Wisconsin to Florida. It was the first time my life was uprooted from everything familiar, and taken in a direction where everything was unknown, where I did not have any control. But, with the teacup story in mind, I knew that God was using those valleys to shape me into who I would become. He just wasn’t done yet.
In Genesis 40, Joseph is in Pharaoh's prison. Verse 4 says that he stayed there for “some time.” I never realized how long Joseph was in prison until recently. He didn’t know if he would be there for a few weeks, months, years, or if he might die there. He waited. God was forming and shaping him for a unique purpose.
We can see part of that purpose take place later in the next chapter when he is remembered (finally) by the cupbearer and taken to Pharaoh to interpret his dream. Which leads to him being put into place as Pharaoh's second in command to help save Egypt. Wow, what a purpose!
But I wonder, what would have happened if Joseph didn’t spend over 2 years in that prison? How much did that experience shape and refine him into the man he needed to become to rule a kingdom, and make difficult decisions that affected thousands of lives?
God is refining. He is shaping. He is not done with you yet. I have to keep reminding myself of this when I am in one of those valleys. Whether it was during college finals week, moving across the country (more than once), going through breakups, or sitting on my bedroom floor in a mess of kleenex. God was (and still is) right there with me, just like he was right there, looking into the oven at that little teacup.
Some refinements are small moments in time. Like when you’ve just had an oddly rough day at work out of the blue, or when dinner completely flops (for my husband and I that means it’s pizza night).
But other times, it is a whole season of life, just like Joseph, we don’t know if it is going to be a few weeks, months, or even years. God is still there, he has a plan. He is molding and shaping you, he’s just not done with you yet.