What Use Is A Vase?

It is true that there is little use for a vase. Being so, the little vase could not sleep. It wrestled with its thoughts all day and all night awaiting the return of the master. Anxious, and full of excitment, it starred at the door to the shed.

"What stood outside, beyond the threshold?" It thought to himself. "What mysteries would be revealed?" His contemplation rose with a fascinating wonder. Questions nagged at him and persisted throughout the cold night.

After, what he thought had been hours, he heard a noise outside the shed. The creaking of the door hinges echoed into the twilight, and the door opened. There at the threshold, at the gateway between the shed and the rest of the world a shadow stood. Out of the shadow a voice spoke. "My little friend, it is early in the morning, are you there?"

The vase realized the man was talking to him. He started. "Oh, I'm here. I couldn't sleep all night."

"I didn't think so." Said the man.

"Have you come for me?"

"Yes. I keep my promises. I will use you today. And as you requested, I will apply my little vase as a shovel in the dirt. But I ask you again, do you really want to be used as a shovel? I have made my shovels strong for a reason, I have coated it with gold for a future purpose. You see, they are made for such laborous work. But you are fragile. You may break under such strain. The earth is not easy to move."

The vase did not feel weak. He felt alive and strong. He even felt hurt at the suggestion of his weakness. He would prove his master wrong.

The master could see the agitation in the face of the vase, so he ended the conversation. He grabbed the vase and carried him outside, and into the lush garden. The garden was full of brilliant flowers; reds, blues, purples, gold, even colors the vase couln't imagine existed were painted across the garden.

The vase was spellbound. Large green stocks rose up with sharp thorns on the lovely roses and sweet perfumes of lavendar and jasper transcended the air. What a magnificent place!

The master carried the vase across the garden and into a large area that was desolate and muddy. No flowers, no grass, no bushes. The black stained soil attracted the intense heat of the sunlight, and the air was ripe with fowl odor.

"What are we doing here?" Asked the vase in a quisical look.

The master looked at him in his hand. "This is the ground I have to prepare for a garden. Indeed it's not beautiful now, but it shall be some day. You see I am planting just one more species of plant. It will be my final creation here, my glory, my imagination all wrapped up in one plant. Then I shall retire."

The vase didn't care so much for this place. Whatever the master saw in it, he didn't. He returned his gaze on the previous garden they had walked through. "But as you were carrying my through the other garden I thought for sure you would use me there." The vase said.

"Sorry my little one. I am finished in that garden."

"Why not just toss your seeds upon the ground and make this gardening thing so much easier. Why dig at all?"

"Oh, my dear vase, you understand so little. If I were to sow a seed in this unfertile soil, nothing would grow. The beautiful flowers you saw in the previous garden wouldn't take root, they could never survive."

The vase looked at the ground. It was muddy and rocky, and suddenly, he felt afraid of the task he had asked for. "What else can I be used for?"

"Well, let me see, what about a vase?"

The little vase rolled his eyes. "Other than that."

"There is nothing else I want to use you for. You asked to be a shovel so I brought you out here. Do you not want to be here?" The master said it with a harshness. The vase even trembled at the tone.

The little vase pondered it for a moment. "I do want to be here. I want to be used as a shovel. But will this place really be as beautiful as the other garden."

The master glanced down again, nodding. "Yes. Just as someday you'll be as beautiful as I intended you to be."

The vase lowered his eyes. He didn't feel beautiful. He felt ugly and unimportant.

The man softened, and felt sympathy for the vase he'd made. "What is it?" He asked.

"I don't see how I will ever be as beautiful as your shovel, or your spade, or your garden."

"But look. You asked to be a shovel, certainly you see how important and useful that is to me?"

The master was right. He might not be magnificent, but he could be useful. He nodded and smiled. With that, the gardener picked him up with a strong hand and began to dig.

With mighty sweeps of the vase, the master plunged the vase downward into the muddy soil. For some time the process worked well. The inside of the vase would fill with earth and the master would dump it out in his wheel burrow. This went on for several hours, until, a loud cry burst from the vase.

"OUCH!"

The master had hit something. The man pulled the vase out of the soil and examined it. Just below the detailed rim a large section of clay had busted off.

The master looked at the vase. "What are we going to do now?"

A Magnificent Night

"The potter, for instance, is always assumed to have complete control over the clay, making with one lump a lovely vase, and with another a pot for sewer." - Romans 9:21 J.B. Phillips Modern English Translation



On a glorious day, on the eve of summer, a potter set to work shaping a small lump of clay. The day marched on in slow progress, but just as the sky began to paint itself with brilliant hues of orange and purple; even as the shadows began frolicking across a small village in Dunedin, an exclamation of joy shattered the still evening. The potter had finished his creation.

The vase which he had carved from the lump was beautiful, having a wide rim and exquisite detail in the engraved vines that he had etched around its face. Being exhausted from his efforts, he placed it on a shelf in shed across the garden, and retired to bed. Now, something happened that night which is too wonderful to put into words, but the vase came to life, and woke from its non-existence, and breathed.

(These are the events that followed that miraculous night)

The vase awoke that morning feeling very sore and terribly achy. Perhaps from the shaping of its form, or from the firing process of the furnace. Now, it couldn't remember the night before, but knew something was different, something was new. It looked at the things around it in the shed and saw a bronze spade, silver hoe and golden shovel. The items were magnificent. They had such splendor, such majesty, and they were awesome to behold. He realized then that the potter must also be a gardener, a master gardener to own such great tools.

Suddenly, the shed door opened and a bright light penetrated the dark corners of the shed. The light sparkled off of the precious tools like tiny galaxies shimmering in the cold, wooden room. They were even more beautiful than the tiny vase could've imagined. Then it was, that the moment came when its curiosity could not be tamed. If these tools in the shed were so magnificent, then it must be a marvel. With the slightest smile and a boastful eye, it glanced down at the light reflecting off of it, expecting to be astonished at what if found. Then lightning struck him with such a jolt. His smile faded, not anywhere to be found, and a sorrowful sigh twisted his features.

"I'm clay. An ugly, no good vase. Who would create such a artifact for humiliation?"

Just then, as if the tools in the shed had heard him, there was a tumultuous laugh. He felt ashamed. No good master potter or gardener would ever think of creating such a tragedy, such a . . . mistake!

"Why clay? Why a useless vase? Oh, fortune must be against me. What a wretch." The vase thought to himself.

Suddenly, a voice thundered inside the shed. "Did I hear someone?"

The vase lifted up his eyes to behold a man standing at the threshold of the door. Since this man's image was too great to describe, I will not attempt it. But the reader must know, that the vase shook with a terrible force at his sight. After many thoughtful moments, the vase summoned up enough courage to speak.

"Surely, you are my master. Surely, you created all these things in here, since you stand at the threshold of the door and can even hear me speak."

The man nodded.

"Therefore, why are all these tools so beautiful to my sight, and I am but the dullest shade of sand?" The vase asked with a deep groan.

"Surely, you don't regret my making you?"

The vase paused. "Of course not."

"Then we agree."

"Agree about what?"

"That I will not cast you aside into the trash heap. For then I would feel as if all my time efforts yesterday were careless. And be sure, I have never regretted anything I've made."

"But then why make me a mere vase? And out of clay?"

The master looked at the tiny, and even pathetic face of the vase. "Would you rather be a shovel?" The man said it with such sincerity that the vase actually began to smile again.

A childlike look fell on its face. "Oh yes, yes, make me a shovel."

"I'm sorry my young vase. I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"I cannot melt you down and reuse you. Once the clay has been fired it is finished."

A sad expression tormented the vase. Perhaps being destroyed would be better than a life spent stored away in a gloomy shed, spotted with spider webs and rain water.

The man continued, "But I can try to use you as a shovel if you like."

The vase gleamed with hope again. If he could be a shovel, certainly he could be anything he wanted. The could see the approval in the vase.

"Then I will return tomorrow morning. I've got preliminary digging today, though." He grabbed the gold shovel and left, closing the door behind him.