Well, Hello.

One Hundred-Fold Ministries is all about the gospel of the Kingdom. It’s our firm belief and really our deep hope that there are great, untapped blessings (and miracles even) set aside for us that we can know just by setting our eyes on the central theme and message of Jesus. His person, his work, and teachings, the central theme, and that is what’s called the Gospel of the Kingdom.

This is Dave Scherrer, and here at Kingdom Offerings, our podcast environment, we spend a little bit of time every other week trying to unpack some of these gospel truths. We have said that stories might be the best way to communicate the mystery and to pique the interest of those who are asking for help in understanding what is this good news, this gospel exactly. After all, that was the most common method that Jesus used when trying to help us understand the Kingdom of God.

He would say, “Oh, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, is like”, maybe pause for a minute, and then He would tell a story about a mustard seed or a vineyard owner. It seems that sometimes a story is the best hope to make the eternal come alive in our imagination, by tapping into our imagination.

So, I wrote this story a number of years ago, and it’s a bit long, and so we’re gonna leave you hanging about halfway through it, but I believe it will help us understand a little piece of the Gospel of the Kingdom. In our next podcast offering, we’ll finish it out. I hope you like it. It’s called The Vase. The story goes like this.

Of course, like most good stories, this happened a long, long time ago. So long ago, that hardly anybody remembers this story at all. I can only tell you now because my father told me a hundred times, I think, and his father told it to him, and my great-grandfather told it to my grandfather. Well, it was about a potter that was a friend of my great-great-great-grandfather. At least that’s what they told me. Maybe that’s how it all started. Anyway, as you can tell, the story is very old.

And now, maybe you’re wondering about why he’s the hero of the story, or maybe you’re wondering even what a potter is. We should talk about that first. A potter is someone who works with clay; someone who can make plates and vases and pots. I think that’s maybe why they call them “potters”. Long ago, before there were all these modern ways of making things that there are now, plates and vases and pots were all made by hand from clay.

You take clay, you fashion it into a pot or a vase, very carefully and slowly. The clay has to be just so. Not too much water, not too much dirt. Then, oddly, you have to bake the clay. There needs to be the right amount of heat in the fire of the kiln to make the vase hard without at the same time cracking it into pieces. It’s only a skilled potter that could make the finest pots and vases.

And if you were very, very good, you could sell your pottery at the city market, make some money. Potters had to be both good with their hands and good with their minds. All right, so back to our story. Enoch, he was the very best at working with clay – the very best. He spent his life learning to look for the very best clay, which wasn’t as easy to find as you might think.

It was nearly impossible to buy good clay in those days, and that’s why Enoch and his wife Marta, the little baby girl, Elsa lived so far away from the closest city. They had to live where clay could be found in nature. As it turns out, the very best was almost a week’s walking journey from the city where Enoch could sell the pots and vases that he made in his shop behind his house.

Usually about three times a year, Enoch would load up his hand cart, he’d take his finished pots and vases, and he’d make a trip to the city and sell them for dried meat and beans and seeds and wheat. It was a modest lifestyle, but they could make things work as long as nothing went wrong.

And then one day, things went wrong, very wrong. Baby Elsa, she got sick. She had a terrible fever, and she would not eat. They needed medicine, and it felt like they needed it soon, but Enoch had just returned from the city only a few days before. He had sold all his pots and vases. He’d spent it on wheat and dried meat. They needed gold to buy medicine, and more gold than they had ever had before. Enoch’s wife, Marta, was scared. There was no way to get the gold they needed without dozens of vases to sell, and that would take months.

Enoch went out to the fields that night to pray. Not really pray for answers, just really to complain to God.” “You,” Enoch shouted to the sky. “You, you who make all things and bring justice to all things. How is this justice? She is just a little girl. You gave me the job of providing. I am a simple man. I have simple skills. They say you give and take away. Why do you give in the first place if only to take away? What is my wife going to do if Elsa dies? What am I going to do?”

And he went on like this for a good while. In a way, you can’t blame him. It felt to Enoch like his world was ending. In a moment of frustration, he kicked the dirt, and then the miracle happened.

The dust that flew up from where Enoch kicked at the dirt was odd. It was white and fine as dust. It was pure and clean. It was light as a feather, but it had a certain firmness to it that he’d never seen before. It was powdered clay. But not just clay. It was the finest clay in all the world Enoch knew. The clay from the Far East was good, but it wasn’t this pure. From the far north coast was even better. But it wasn’t as fine as this. No, this was the best anyone had ever seen. He put his hand to his mouth and licked his finger. He touched the dust and tasted it. He smelled it. It was the purest, finest, most remarkable clay he had ever seen.

He pulled off his shirt in his excitement, and he began scooping up the dust into it. He knew at once that this was his chance. His chance to save his daughter, to give his wife hope.

There was maybe only three or four pounds at most, and he looked for more, but there was no more. But there was enough. There was enough to make the most delicate, beautiful vase that the world had ever seen. And he kind of laughed to himself. A moment ago, he was so angry, and now he was filled with such hope. And to imagine it was just dumb luck.

Enoch stopped. He took a deep breath. “Help me now. Help me fashion with my two hands the vase that will save my daughter’s life.”

Even with this mysterious find of perfect clay, there would have to be shortcuts and risks taken. There was no time to knead the bubbles out of the clay or to experiment on finding just the right mixture of water and clay. No, it had to be right the first time.

And then, as my father used to say, the miracles just kept happening. The clay took the water a little at a time until it would hold no more. It was white as snow and turned on the wheel perfectly in Enoch’s hands. It surprised Enoch that the clay was so much heavier than his usual clay, though it had much less water in it. He spun the wheel a bit faster now, pumping the spin drive with his foot to a rhythm in his head.

He worked the lump of clay from the bottom up, and the clay held its form with ease. Using his skilled fingers, he pulled the clay up, and then using his thumbs, he evened out the sides so that it grew tall and exactly proportioned. The vase that took shape now in the middle of the night was delicate and tall, firm, but frail. It was over 20 inches tall when he was done, and the walls of the vase were so thin he could see light through them.

It was as if the clay itself wanted to be this vase, as though it formed itself. Well, Enoch had started the fire for the kill even before he started forming the vase. As he put the vase in to harden in the heat of the kiln, Enoch once again started to pray. He knew that most of the failures in clay pots happened in the firing when the clay had imperfections in bubbles.

He didn’t have time for a failure. His prayer was simple. “Please, God, please, God, God, please.” Over and over, silently to himself as the minutes passed to hours. Finally, when he thought it was time, he took a mallet and knocked out the small blocks that kept the kiln door closed, and he held his breath.

In one night from start to finish, 10 hours at most, the vase came out of the kiln and was absolutely perfect. He couldn’t wait for it to cool. The journey to town was five days or more, and he said to himself that he could only be carrying his pack with the vase tucked inside, and that way he could travel both night and day. Maybe if it went well, he could be back in time to save his daughter with medicine.

If he could find a buyer, and if he was paid enough for the vase, perhaps then, he could afford the medicine. And that would be if he could find the right medicine. He still needed so many miracles. Well, with the vase still warm, safely wrapped and stowed in his pack, he kissed his wife, Marta  awake, and he said, “God has shown us a way out. I’m going back to town. Yes, I know I just got home, but I have one last thing to sell. I just made it, Marta, during the night. It’s the most perfect vase ever made. It is Marta, I’m not bragging. God made it. It might be enough, Marta. It might be enough for medicine that we need. This is our only hope. I’m leaving now. Pray for me, Marta. I will be home as soon as I can.”

He kissed Marta’s worried face one last time and touched his hand to Elsa’s head. He turned and smiled and said, “God is doing this, Marta. Don’t be afraid.” And he ran off. Now, right here, my father would say to me when telling the story, “Now, this story is maybe only halfway through. If you want to take a break, this would be a good time, but I need to tell you something – that something really bad, very bad is about to happen.”

And of course, that always made me want to have him finish the story all the more. Even when I knew how the story went, he would still smile and ask me if I wanted to keep going.

And this is where I’m gonna stop. The next time you tune in to Kingdom Offerings, we’ll finish the rest of this story. We’ll find out what the bad news was, and we’ll find out what the Kingdom principle is, that God has set aside for us in story.

This is Dave Scherrer, and this is Kingdom Offerings. I look forward to hearing from you – maybe when the story is all over.

Take care.