God’s Rubbish Heap

“Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?”—Isaiah 45:9.

The word “potsherd” arrests one. I have in my mind’s eye a garden I know full well, and at the end of it in a corner there is quite a heap of rubbish. There are the cinders from the fire by which the hothouse is warmed, and often remnants of decayed vegetable matter, and often pieces of broken pottery, or china. I can see a bit of broken flower pot emerging from the dark cinders. That is a potsherd, a sherd or shred of pottery which is useless. It is fit only to be thrown away. It is waste.

And God says that those Israelites who complained about His delivering them by Cyrus were risking being thrown away upon His rubbish heap.

Isaiah seems in fancy to have heard a potsherd talking to a potsherd, one piece of pottery antagonizing another; and he says it is better for a piece of pottery to argue with another piece than for either of them to antagonize the potter.

I am afraid lest some of you may be on God’s rubbish heap, and I forget everything else in my desire to save your life from being thrown aside as a waste, because if it is thrown aside as waste in