" M a k e M e U s e f u l T o Y o u, L o r d "
(c) W. Duane Clark
2001 WorldSource Publishing
Make me useful to You, Lord.
Break me in two, or four, or more.
Drag Your threshing sledge across my life.
Past when I cry, "No more!"
(For only You know what is necessary.)
Roll Your millstone over me.
Bring it around and around again.
Crush me into pieces.
Grind me against the threshing floor.
Then heave me into the sky.
And send The Wind to blow away the chaff.
To blow away the bad; everything that's bad.
Then God, if You can, if You will, put to good use whatever might be left of me.
selah
But how can the clay be brought to good use,
if it is not shaped by potter's hand
upon the wheel ?
How can what is beautiful be revealed,
if what is unseemly be not removed ?
How can the medicine for healing come forth,
if the ingredients are not subject to mortar and pestle ?
How can the dross be removed from the ore,
if it not be brought to the surface
by the boiling heat ?
Then how can the iron be forged between maul and anvil,
if it is not thrust back into the furnace,
again and again ?
If I have already arrived at my destination,
is it then that I begin my journey ?
How can I become more like Jesus,
if I never discover how little like Him I am ?
I should thank Him for every opportunity for the
mirror to be held up. (I would not that I walk away and forget.)
The more I know Him, the more I know I don't know Him,
and the closer I get to Him, the further away I feel.
But what good is a God Who can be found out ?
selah
Why do I loathe who I am ?
Why do I reject what God has made ?
How can the clay say to the potter, 'What have you made?'
I truly must doubt God's omniscience.
I must doubt that He made me just like this for a purpose.
Why do I hate the sound of my voice ?
Why do I hate my physique ?
But yet I have the nerve to think to myself, "How sad", when I see little girls trying so desperately to look like the latest popular star on the cover of the teen magazine.
Is there no end to the increase of my hypocrisy ? !
How different am I from them as long as I rail against embracing who I am . . .
to the very fullest ?
He could have made me any one of billions of ways, yet He chose this way.
The ground is level at the foot of the cross, so am I any less important to Him than anyone else ?
Just as there are things that Michael Jordan can do that I will never be able to do, so too are there things that I can do that he will never be able to do.
I cannot slam-dunk a basketball. But has he ever written a song that has brought someone closer to God ?
I am where I am - in this place and moment in time - made like this for reasons far beyond my ability to ever fully grasp.
Those little girls may miss God's intended purpose for them - set even before the foundations of the earth - as long as they continue to try to be someone else, but so will I, as long as I fail to find out and fully come to terms with who God has so thoughtfully and carefully fashioned me to be.
