Jars of Clay

I know you all have them. I cannot be alone in this. The cabinet door that you open as fast as you can, throw the plastic container in, and slam the door before 3,000 plastic containers and lids spill out onto your floor... There are times when I am not fast enough and they slide out like lava from a new volcanic eruption. They spread at an alarming rate at my feet, and as I look at the thousands of varying shapes and sizes of storage containers, I know that this is not the way it should be.

I used to be organized and neat. I seemed to have a clean house long ago. Dim memories of neat cabinets with modest stacks of food storage containers hover in my mind. We will never have enough leftovers to use all these containers. Our nation would never have enough leftovers to use all these containers! I know I threw out at least a thousand of them a few months ago. We didn't use to all run for cover when I gave the warning shout that "the cabinet" was about to be opened. And now, here we are again with an impossible pile of empty plastic containers. And to top it all off, not a single lid matches a single one of these self-propagating containers. They are useless, empty vessels slowly filling my home, malignantly creeping into healthy, clean cabinets.

Yesterday, Asherel and I read the verse about how we are "jars of clay" that house a treasure beyond compare. While our bodies are fragile and mortal, we are the temple of the immortal Holy Spirit, that lives in all of us who accept the gift that Jesus gives us. We aren't made of diamonds, though what we hold within us is of greater value than even diamonds. We aren't made of plastic, probably because that hadn't been invented yet when God made man. But I see a distinct parallel between those empty useless plastic mismatched containers overpopulating in my cabinet and the jars of clay talked about in 2 Corinthians.

It is not the container that is of any value. It is what the container holds. I read the paper and watch TV and peruse the description of movies and skim the shelves of bestsellers.... and so often what I see are empty containers, who are valuing the jar more than the treasure it might hold. I know every generation says the world is going to "hell in a handcart", and every old person like me thinks our morals are disintegrating and our reliance on God is evaporating.... but this time it really is. Compare commercials from 30 years ago with the commercials of today. Victoria Secret ads are pornographic... and they are all over prime time television. I won't go on in this vein because I have a cabinet of plastic containers I need to be cleaning instead of pontificating.


2 Corinthians 4: 16-18
¹⁶Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ¹⁷For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.