Beyond Common Sense

God does not tell us that we are workmen who are to use and manage instruments. Instead we are the instruments to be used and managed by the divine Master Workman who make us, and who alone, therefore, understands for what work we are best fitted and how we are best used.  The only thing the instrument can do is yield itself perfectly to the will of the Master Workman.  The Master surely knows how best to use His instruments, and it is plainly not the business of the tool to decide these questions for itself.  Neither must it try to help by its own efforts to do the work.

One absolutely necessary characteristic of a tool is its pliableness.  The moment resistance is felt in any tool, the moment it refuses to move just as the master wants, that moment it becomes unfit for use.  If I am writing with a fine gold pen and it begins to catch and sputter and move with difficulty, I will soon lay it aside and use gladly in its place even a stub end of a lead pencil if only it will move easily in obedience to my will.

 The strength of an instrument lies in its helplessness.

Because it is helpless to do anything of itself, the master can use it as he pleases.

                                  “But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay,                                        and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.” 

Isaiah 64:8

-taken from God is Enough by Hannah Whitall Smith