Over the last couple weeks, I (re-)read The Unseen Essential. In a discussion where the main character, Michael, is learning about the stages clay goes through as it is prepared to be a useful vessel (and how that relates to us, as clay in the hands of the Master Potter), I read the following, which encouraged me in our family’s current circumstances.

Conforming to the potter’s image of what it should be was not the final stage yet. After being placed up on a shelf, the damp vessel had to dry out and harden. Michael sensed how difficult that must be for someone called to the ministry. To look and feel ready to be used, and yet be forced to be shelved in the shadows, waiting and watching. He wondered how many ministers failed at this point.

From what he’d heard of all the ministries crumpling of late, he reasoned that far too many had never allowed themselves to undergo the eighth and final stage of preparation. “And no wonder!” he exclaimed out loud after reading about the long, very slow process of firing in the kiln. At temperatures up to 1000 degrees centigrade or even higher!