Cracked Pots

When I think of potting plants, I immediately think of using terra cotta pots. With all the plastic containers, glazed pottery, and baskets available for plants, I'm still drawn to the brownish-orangy, yellow clay pots.

I especially love aged clay pots -- the ones in which moss has begun to grow over the surface. Such character this lends to the container as well as color and soft texture.

New or old, these are my favorite. The only problem is they have a tendency to break easily. Many a spring I have sorted through containers to find broken clay pots nestled among the new and not so new. I also find them around the house, cracked but with the soil and sometimes even the plant, captured inside.

I recently found a couple of uses for the broken pieces of these earthen vessels:

• use small pieces in the bottom of a larger container to provide drainage 
• place the container on the ground - broken side down - and place a plant in the ground giving the illusion of a plant growing out of the container
• Take larger pieces of the pot and place strategically in the flower bed to add interest

It's so difficult for a gardener to throw anything away!

I would like to think I have aged with grace and have a soft layer of beautiful moss that adds character, but I feel more like a cracked pot. In the pile of old and new, useful and aged pots, I show up as broken pieces of an earthen vessel. But I have found that I'm under the care of a loving Gardener and He too finds it difficult to throw anything away!


Under His care, He takes my brokenness and makes it useful for His Kingdom and His Glory. I may not be the most magnificent pot in the pile, but God still loves me and has a purpose for me. AND . . . He has one for you too.
 

 "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." 

(Psa. 147:3 NKJV).