When I first came across this years ago, I was doing some digging in the Word on this verse and its surrounding context when at the same time I watched a movie on the story of Masada. Masada was a mountaintop fortress in the days of Jesus which was besieged by the Romans for two years and finally fell into their hands in AD 73. (I know I should write CE but I refuse) Nine hundred Jewish defenders had resisted 10,000 crack Roman troops for two years. When it was finally inevitable that the Romans would break through, the Jewish inhabitants made a mass suicide pact. The movie depicted the events and at the moment of decision they caste a vote as to whether they would die at their own hands or fight the Roman to the death. How did they caste their vote? The movie depicted them taking an old earthen ware jar in the corner and breaking it into pottery shards and then using those to caste their vote. At the time I had a sense that that act was somehow connected with what I had been studying in the Bible and so dug into and found treasure in jars of clay. Didn’t know anything about Jars of Clay (the Rock band) at that time. They weren’t even formed. A good name for a Christian band though.
Jars of Clay’s song “Worlds Apart” is very interesting. It has a very powerful meaning. It’s about sin and how nobody is to be blamed but themselves. The song is focused on confessing our faults and asking for forgiveness, asking God to break us and tear our world apart in order to have a new life. It makes me wonder if they indeed know what Ostraca are all about.
A few years after finding the link between the ostraca and 2 Cor 4:7 I shared the truth at a Wycliffe devotional in Australia while we were being trained as Bible Translators. Bruce Hooley, one of the lecturers, shared with me his poem Masks. I have asked Bruce for permission to share it with you gemmers. Maybe I am breaking with tradition in sharing the lyrics of a song at least once with each book I Gem. This time not a song but a poem. Same diff, just no music.