The Potter's Wheel on Magnolia Street

Every Saturday morning, ceramic artist Elena Vargas opens her studio on Magnolia Street in San Antonio to teach free classes to teenagers from the surrounding neighborhood. She has one rule: you have to let her guide your hands before you work alone.

One afternoon, a sixteen-year-old named Marcus sat at the wheel, jaw clenched, forcing the clay into the shape he wanted. The lump wobbled, collapsed, folded in on itself. He slammed his fist on the table. "It's ruined," he said. "There's nothing left to work with."

Elena pulled up a stool beside him. She didn't scold him. She didn't lecture. She simply scooped up the misshapen clay, pressed it back into a ball, set it on the wheel, and said, "It's not ruined. It just needs to remember whose hands it's in."

With her steady fingers wrapped around his, the clay began to center. Something beautiful started to rise.

Isaiah's ancient prayer carries that same raw honesty — the confession that we are cracked and collapsed, that our best efforts wobble and fold. "All of us have become like one who is unclean," the prophet admits. Yet in the very next breath, he dares to say, "You, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the Potter."

The prayer of Isaiah 64 is not a prayer of the proud. It is the prayer of collapsed clay — trusting that the hands of the Almighty have not pulled away.