Lamentations 4

How the gold has become dim!
How changed the fine gold!
The stones of the sanctuary are scattered
At the head of every street.

The precious sons of Zion,
Valuable as fine gold,
How they are regarded as clay pots,
The work of the hands of the potter! vv.1-2

Read chapter 4
Have you ever seen how gold is collected and found?  It's not just someone walking around with a metal detector and when he hears beeping he digs in the ground and discovers a block of gold.  Actually it can be unseen to the naked eye (unless you're a geologist).  My sister is a geologist of a gold mine in Australia.  I've gone out to visit her and of course that included going to her work mine site and getting a whole in-depth tour.  It consisted of putting on all this gear to go under ground and drive around in huge rigs to different drill sites, hear how and where they choose to drill and then see what they've excavated from the earth of the process of sifting, melting, purifying the dross away to finally getting a brick of gold.  It's insane and a bit over my head.  I remember my first thought was that everything just looks like piles of dirt, but from this mountain of dirt they would get so many ounces of gold.  It may take hundreds of thousands of dollars of all the work that goes in to getting maybe one kilo of gold, but that kilo is worth so much more.  Well this is the picture that we get here in this chapter of Lamentations.  God calls His people precious and valuable- as fine gold, yet the Babylonians only see them as clay pots.  Clay pots are just common utensils that no one looks or thinks twice about. And if a clay pot broke it was just replaced rather than fixed because it had so little value so not worth the effort to repair.  The Babylonians had smashed/killed many of the Israelites and those that were left that were taken into captivity were regarded as just a common thing that could be replaced when needed.  
How do you feel like a clay pot sometimes?  How do you feel like fine gold?  Only when gold has gone through all the refining process does it truly go from dirt, to dim, to shine! Let the Lord refine you.