To Protect What is Yours

Make it with excellence

Whatever it is, the way you carry it will make all the difference.

I find myself holding a jar. One that I’ve spent many years to mold & create. One that’s been refined through the furnace and is ready to be used, glossed up & all.
And when I hold it, there is a deep sense of pride. Like no one has a jar like this one type of pride. I want to boast about it for days on end.
Yet sometimes, I’m afraid I’ll drop it and break it.
That it’ll shatter and there’ll be no going back.
I’m amazed at how I can spend all these years to make this one thing, and it be so fragile.

The jar is my calling.
The life that God has invited me to live with Him - one of a beautiful co-partnership where I get to bring Heaven onto Earth in the way that I talk, the way that I breathe, the way that I do friendships, the way that I pursue a career, the way that I walk into a room.

And though grace abounds, a never-ending resource with no limit,
There comes a time where God invites us into maturity.
Where we have to graduate from baby food and eat tough meat.
Where I’m responsible to hold my own jar, with cautiousness and with skill.
Where He invites me into a real partnership, and not a fake one where He does everything for the both of us.
One where He’s open to hearing my ideas, and is so fond of me that I can contend for a different outcome, and angels can be commissioned at the sound of my voice.

I’m realizing more and more that when God calls us into a great thing, we have to be fit to step into it.
And though we say that God uses the weak, the sinful, and the least qualified,
the truth is that God actually makes us strong, holds no record of our sin, and also knew exactly what He was doing when He made David, a mere shepherd, practice slingshots for 15+ years. He was only the least qualified in the world’s eyes. But in God’s eyes…
In God’s eyes, he was qualified to lead an entire nation.

Because of this, I’m realizing more and more now that my daily choices of how I choose to put God at the forefront of my thinking actually matter.
My words matter.
My actions matter.
My choices matter.
I matter.
Therefore, I will do the hard work of protecting the jar that He has so intentionally made.
To become a daughter that can be entrusted to do this with excellence.
And I will invite Him into every inch of my heart - to cover all doubts, all shortcomings, all human-ness
So that I can finish the race well.