“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’?” Isaiah 45:9 (NIV)
Second day at Folk School started with great excitement. We got to see our first tray of work which had been created the day before and fired all afternoon. Firing of fused glass takes about twelve hours. The actual heating in the kiln runs about five hours and is a complicated process. You start the heat gradually until you reach your maximum temperature of about 1200-1400 degrees depending if you want a full fuse (glass pieces are melted into one) or a low fuse (glass pieces are stuck together but retain their individual shape and dimension). Once the desired temperature is reached, you check your glass periodically until it has melted to your desired look. Then, you begin slowly cooling your kiln until finally, the kiln is shut off and you leave it until it has gone back to less than 200 degrees. For us, that cooling time took all night long. So, when we left the studio each night, we did not know what our pieces would look like until we arrived back at school the next morning and could finally peek into our kilns. Knowing how excited we were, our instructor, Bev, had us all gather around each person’s kiln and with great drama, we opened each door, exclaiming over what that person had created. I was thrilled with the way that some of my pieces turned out, but disappointed in others. A green butterfly looked like it would fly away. It caught my instructor’s eye, so I vowed to make a second one for her. A blue triangle and matching earrings were not as striking as I hoped they would be. I found it amusing that the things I liked the most were the pieces I arranged from scrap as experiments and to fill up empty spots on my tray. A green and turquoise pendant was breathtaking, but I laughed over it because it was made up two pieces of broken glass. A pin made of green and clear glass looked like the ocean. Bev said that I probably liked them so much because when they went into the kiln, I had no expectations of what they would be and could enjoy them without disappointment. I think she was right. It made me think of how I react to my Creator sometimes. When He works to mold me into the woman He would have me to be, I want to tell Him how He should do His work. I have expectations of what I think the outcome should be. Yet, He knows best and it is not up to me to say, “I want to be here or there. Put me with this color and not that. I should be a pin and not a pendant.” Instead, I am called to simply do as He instructs and wait and watch to see what a marvelous work He does with my life. I can be assured there will be no disappointments when the Master Craftsmen is at work.
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