It's like looking through mud

2 Corinthians 4:7 "We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves."
We have these treasures in earthen vessels…
This verse fascinates me. An earthen vessel, clay jar, whatever you call it, basically it’s mud. Have you ever tried to look through mud? It’s impossible. So our treasure is inside mud.
Do you ever judge someone on their outside? The way they are dressed, skin color, the look on their face, the way they behave just one time? I’m not talking about the negative, either. We can see someone on a good day and think they are a positive happy person, when in reality that’s the only time they’ve smiled this decade. Think someone is classy or elegant or a freak based on the way they are dressed? I met this head on the last two weeks. Nate’s two friends that died on consecutive Saturdays. If you put pictures side by side, one was an Abercrombie wearing eagle scout card carrying Christian clean cut white boy. One was a rap music loving baseball hat baggy pants gold chain wearing black boy. One got shot being robbed at a convenience store by a gang member. One died in a drunk driving accident when he tried to make a turn going 90 miles an hour. Nate’s commentary? White boy drunk driving, he could’ve seen it coming. He was known as a partier, Nate was surprised to hear he was a Christian. Black boy loved rap music shot in parking lot? One of the greatest kids Nate knew. Totally not the kind of kid to be in a place where that happened, it was accidental wrong place, wrong time. Nate admired him.

So as I was chewing on the fact that our treasure is hidden in clay vessels, I wondered how everyone sees it. Do we pour it out? I think we pour out our love, our time, our talents, but I had another thought on this. Our “treasure” is being refined. Zechariah 13:9 says "I will bring that group through the fire and make them pure. I will refine them like silver and purify them like gold." The worthless, unnecessary junk is being burned up, leaving behind what is valuable. Isaiah 48:10 says "I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering". So as our earthen vessel is fired in the furnace of suffering, we are being stripped of the stuff that doesn’t matter in our lives. How does the world see that? As our vessels are cracked and broken, the precious metal shines through. When we have chunks taken out of our shell, the beauty of what God has done in our lives is allowed to shine through. It is when we are at our most vulnerable the beauty is most visible. So when you are in the furnace of suffering, we are being made beautiful.