Lien Among the Pots

In her devotional, Edges of His Ways (1932), the great missionary, Amy Carmichael (1932).wrote the following based on: Psalm 68:13:

Though ye have lien among the pots. . . .

I think we sometimes feel as though we had. Perhaps we have been especially eager to press through and up into the clear air, and meet our Lord in the radiant, intimate way granted to others, and we do not seem to have been able to do so. The more we looked towards Him Whom our soul loveth, the more we saw His dazzling purity, the more we felt “among the pots”, sooty; like him who “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto Heaven”; like him who said, “Woe is Me! For I am undone . . . for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”

“Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.” It is the sun striking down upon the bird that gives that look of silver and gold. I have never seen it, on our doves and paddy-birds flying across the sky, without wonder and comfort that passes words. There is nothing too good for His love to do. Love transforms the thing it loves. The look of love transforms. We have lain among the pots; we have not risen to our opportunities. “I am undone” seems somehow to describe our condition. And yet our Lord, our glorious Lord, comes with this word to us, holding it out, as it were, in His pierced hands: “Yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.”