The Potter’s Field

"There is something really beautiful on the horizon, can you sense it? Do you see it? Are you awake for it? Will you wait for it to spring forth?"

This is what I have been waking up to in my mind, the hope and promise of something beautiful to come. Although there has been and is a lot that is being uncovered, cleared away, and refined in the world and I believe on an individual level; there is something very very sacred that is happening...NEW LIFE!

I was reading in Matthew 27 when Judas goes and confesses what he did and gives the money back to the Pharisees and then they in turn use it to buy a potters field. My mind wondered why a potters field? What is the significance of this particular field? So I went digging - looking up what a potters field was/is and then why it was used as field to burry strangers.

Originally the site that was referred to within Matthew 27 is known as Akeldama in the valley of Hinnom which was a source of the best potter's clay. This is where potters collected high-quality, deeply red clay for the production of ceramics, hence the name potter's field. However, once the clay was removed the field would be left unusable for agriculture and why it would become more of a graveyard because of all the holes and trenches that filled the land. It also was in a way already a graveyard for pottery that was deemed un-useful or broken...

As I understood which passages of the Old Testament Matthew was referencing to, Zechariah 11:12-13 and Jeremiah 32:6-15, I began to see something really amazing! For while this potter's field being bought could be seen just as despair and disregarded like the rest of the piles of tossed broken pottery, if you look at Jeremiah 32 this field actually is a place of HOPE!

Sitting there another thought came into my mind "I wonder if this is like the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37?" I sat and thought about it for a while just writing out my thoughts and the connections that were being made in my mind. Because if I think of a potter they take the clay, the dirt that was nothing and create something really beautiful from it, to be used and with great purpose. Sound familiar, just take a look at Genesis 2:7, and Jeremiah 18 which speaks of God as the potter and us as the clay.

Now stay with me, because here is where my eyes got wide with wonder! For even though yes, the potter's field that was bought was done so unrighteously and in sin, if we look and see we can understand that God had something up His sleeve even with this! Because He the grand master potter would take the field were strangers would be buried and redeem them! The "blood money" used to purchase this field was then covered in the holy blood of the Lamb of God - redeemed even though seen as unusable and nothing more than for the dead to be buried in.

And yet, this field is teeming with life! It is filled with hope because of the covering of Jesus! For you see, the scattered and broken pieces of clay in the field are taken and used to make something beautiful again. This is the hope we have in Jesus, in His forgiveness, in His love! This is where I see God taking Ezekiel in a way of the valley of dry bones and telling Him to speak to the bones and the breath - for NEW LIFE to occur within them!

I and you have this HOPE residing inside of us right now! He is literally taking the broken pieces and fragments of our lives and redeeming them for His glory and greater purposes. Maybe you find yourself in this field, deemed as useless, may I suggest that you look around you and ask for God to show you the life that is literally teeming right in front of you?? To be okay to cry out and say "How are you going to use this, show me!?" And allow Him to speak to you and gather the broken fragments of the vessel that carried something valuable and together make something NEW from it all!

Because He uses us to also create beauty from the dirt, just as He took Ezekiel and said "now prophesy" He wants to use us to speak life, hope, and joy back into the dry bones - which is found in the Words that He shares. This is why I say we are on sacred ground even now, for even in the exposure of things around us, maybe in our very own lives, NEW LIFE is happening. Something BEAUTIFUL is being made and REDEEMED so that His GLORY may be made known to us! It takes though a willingness to be broken first in order for healing, and new life to really begin.

My friends, in this time my hope and prayer is that we all fall in broken surrender before Him and allow Him to speak the healing words needed into our lives and that we would be brave enough and willing enough to pick up the pieces that don't seem to fit and ask "how do you want to use this?" And my oh my I cannot wait to see what sort of new vessel He is about to make!