January 21: Treasure in Clay Jars

You wanted to be the strong one. The one who has it together. Instead you feel cracked.

In Paul’s day, clay jars were the plastic tubs of the ancient world. Cheap, common, easily chipped. People sometimes hid valuables in them precisely because no thief would bother looking there.

Paul says that’s how God works with people. He puts His treasure, the light of Christ, into ordinary, breakable human beings. Why? So that it’s obvious the power comes from God and not from us.

That turns the shame of weakness upside down.

Drinkers often feel enormous pressure to look strong. Many started drinking partly to feel stronger: more confident at parties, calmer under stress, braver in conversations. For a while it worked. Then the jar started cracking. The confidence turned into embarrassment. The calm turned into anxiety. The bravery turned into regret.

Step One is the moment the clay jar stops pretending to be iron. You admit you are breakable. You admit alcohol has more power over you than you have over it. That sounds humiliating. Paul says it’s the setting God uses to show what He can do.

Read the next few verses in your own Bible. Paul says he’s pressed but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, struck down but not destroyed. He isn’t describing an unbreakable man. He’s describing a cracked one who keeps not breaking all the way, because something stronger is holding him together.

That’s an honest hope for early recovery. You will have hard days. You’ll feel pressed and confused and knocked down. You don’t have to be strong enough to never feel that way. You need to stay connected to the One who keeps you from being crushed.

The cracks also let the light out. Many people find, later on, that their weakness is exactly what helps them reach others. Nobody is helped much by someone who pretends to have no cracks.

One thing today

Tell one person one way you’ve been pretending to be stronger than you are. Keep it simple. Let them see a crack.

A prayer

God, I’m not as strong as I’ve pretended to be. I’m a clay jar. Put Your treasure in me anyway, and let Your power show where mine runs out.

The admission of Step One is where this begins.

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