Treasures in Jars of Clay

This week I have marveled again at how God delights in showing His strength in weakness. At the forefront of local news this week has been a young man in his early thirties who is an administrator at a small Christian school that many of our friends' children attend. One week ago, while his wife was visiting friends on the East Coast, he fell off a ladder in his garage and, unable to move, laid on the floor for about twenty hours until his father found him and got medical attention for him. While the outlook for his survival was quite bleak earlier this week, his family and friends are rejoicing that he is showing great signs of recovery; in fact, he may be moved to a rehabilitation hospital on Monday. His position as a small school administrator and the extreme trauma of the accident have brought a great deal of local media attention to him and his family. His father and wife have been interviewed on television, and the area newspaper has featured several stories. The family members consistently testify to God's faithfulness and to their dependence on Him, regardless of the eventual outcome. Strength in weakness.

We are, after all, just jars of clay. And our beauty lies in the treasure within us, the ministry of the gospel, and my sweet friend Alicia, at Gavin's Voice, writes beautifully about what she has gained through suffering, as she has loved and cared for her little Gavin through the illness, surgeries, and, at times, life threatening conditions he has faced in his nearly three little years. A jar of clay bursting with the treasure within her.

And yet another dear person, my niece Kristin, has been showing those who know her how beautiful a jar of clay can be. A wonderful wife and mom to two boys, Kristin gave birth to her daughter, Joanna Claire, this week. The problem, though, was that Joanna Claire has been experiencing heart failure since early in Kristin's pregnancy, and at 26 weeks, Joanna went to be with Jesus before she could even be born to this world. And if that weren't trial enough, Joanna joins her older brother, Noah, in heaven. Noah died shortly after his birth in 2006, a victim of a disease that Kristin and her husband were aware of through most of that pregnancy as well. Despite the trial of bearing two children that Kristin would never know in this world, she continues to testify to God's faithfulness and love. A jar of clay bursting with treasure for all to see. You can read about Kristin's pain and her godly response to it here

And in the midst of all this, I have been editing a book by first-time author Gay Hubbard entitled More Than an Aspirin. Gay, a wise and experienced counselor, writes about managing the pain and disappointment in our lives, and the conclusion of her book proves to be an insightful commentary about this life's journey through pain and why it is, as she describes it, a "grimly splendid option," which both Kristin and Alicia already understand. But as jars of clay, Kristin and Alicia would want to point not at themselves and their strength, but at the God who has protected them and kept them strong so that they will never break.


"In this life, the most important thing is not the pain or the joy or the ways in which we manage either. The most important thing is the person we become in progress through the long journey home.

In the end, we discover that one answer to the “why” question is a “who”—the person we can become.

Life, including both our joy and our journey through pain, provides the living space in which we may become family with whom God will be happy to spend eternity (Revelation 21:3–4). We can make vital connection with God through our joy, but the journey through pain provides a grimly splendid option. Uniquely there, we can come to know Christ, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His suffering, and, in this knowing, become like Him (Philippians 3:10–11). It is a prospect to strengthen the weariest pilgrim, worn with the worst of pain.

I think at times about my own journey through pain in this way. It was not—and is not—where I would have wished to go. Nevertheless, this unwelcome journey provides for me the option of becoming who I intend to be. By God’s grace I shall arrive home at last. When I join that huge joyous family crowding around our first-born brother, Jesus (Romans 8:29), I intend that everyone present can know simply by looking that I belong to the family because I look so much like Him (1 John 3:2–3). There I will be glad for His forgiving grace and for every part of the journey—for the pain and the grief and the darkness itself. I will be glad for everything that changed me so that I could carry forever His family likeness in my face."

~From More Than an Aspirin by Gay Hubbard, releasing from Discovery House Publishers in October 2009