So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
Jeremiah 18:1-2
When I lived in Virginia, every evening for four years I took a pottery class. I never became a great potter, but by the end of my four years making pottery, I could form a decent pot that looked mostly like what I had envisioned in my mind before I began. But the pots from my first few months of pottery never looked like the image I had in my mind. Making a pot on a wheel is much more difficult that it first appears.
First you have to knead the clay over and over again, like bread dough, to make sure all the air bubbles are out of the clay. If you leave any air bubbles in the clay, it will be next to impossible to "center" your pot on the wheel. Next comes the centering, the part of pottery that I never grew to love. You slam the clay down on the wheel, and then you work it up and down, until the clay is centered perfectly on the wheel. If the clay is even just a little bit off center, you will end up with a very strange looking pot. My teacher could center a pot in under a minute. I have to confess, that I was never able to do it in less that 4 or 5 minutes.
Only after these two steps are completed properly can you get down to actually making a pot. You open a whole in the middle and then you build the walls. My very first pot had walls that were about an inch thick.. My second pot looked better, until I inadvertently stuck my thumb into it and destroyed the whole thing. My third pot collapsed because I made the walls too thin. I think you get my point. (The following is a link a YouTube video about throwing a pot on a wheel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz-mcZvj_sE ).
Once you have the walls done, you have to cut your pot off the wheel and let it dry for a day or two. You can't let it get too dry, but you can't do anything more if hasn't dried some. Once it has hardened up you have to trim the bottom of the pot. I can't tell you how many pots I ruined at this stage of the game, I'll just say that it wasn't in the single digits. Then, once the pot has been trimmed, you fire it in a kiln for the first time, if it makes it through this stage, then you can add glaze and fire it up again. I never really knew what the pot would look like until it came out of the kiln that final time. Some were beautiful, and some never made it home with me because they landed immediately in the trash can.
The prophet Jeremiah watched a potter at work and saw in the potter's work an analogy for God's work with humans, and I too can see such an analogy, though I might go in a little different direction than Jeremiah. Clay is supple and can be reworked, as long as it hasn't yet been left to harden. When the clay is still wet, it can be molded back into a ball and reworked again and again, until it finally becomes a beautiful vessel. But once the clay becomes hard, and definitely after it has been fired in a kiln, there is no more reworking. The pot is what it will be, and if it is not a beautiful pot, it will never become one.
The questions this raises for me are these: How flexible and supple am I? Is my heart open to change and transformation, or am I set in my ways, hard and unopen to change? As we go through life, it can become easy to get stuck in our ways. We begin to think that the way that we see the world and the way we approach things is the only way. Even when our views or behavior are bringing us pain and heartbreak rather than joy and life, we continue in our behavior, because we have become hardened and unable to change.
But the good news is this, we don't have to be like those pots that I threw out before leaving the pottery studio. We don't have to be so inflexible and hardened that the only choice is to break us up and throw us away. If we open our hearts just a little bit, God the potter will rework us into the beautiful vessel he always intended for us to be. The reworking may not be easy. Indeed, it may be extraordinarily painful, but in the end you will be the pot God intended you to be.
So how do you do this? How do you open your heart to the transformative work of God? The answer comes in understanding the truth of Psalm 139: Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. . . . Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it. . . For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
"I will thank you because I am marvelously made." When you trust that God created you, every single part of you and that you are wonderful and marvelously made, then you will never fear change. You will never fear the transformation that God is working in you, because you will know that whatever new thing God is doing in you, however painful, however scary, will be ok, because God made you in the first place, you are marvelous, and God would never do any work in you that was not good and did not lead to more abundant life.
God is not done with you yet. You are like moist clay, supple and ready to be molded. You were marvelously made when you were born, and you are not done yet. As long as you are breathing, God's creative work is alive within you and God is seeking to transform your life.
Hymn of unknown origin:
You are the Potter, I am the clay
Make me and mold me
Each and everyday
You are the Potter
I am the clay
Make me and mold me, Lord
According to Your way
(You can listen to one version of this song by following this link to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnqzPt3NTRI )
Peace,
Suzannah +
Jeremiah 18:1-2
When I lived in Virginia, every evening for four years I took a pottery class. I never became a great potter, but by the end of my four years making pottery, I could form a decent pot that looked mostly like what I had envisioned in my mind before I began. But the pots from my first few months of pottery never looked like the image I had in my mind. Making a pot on a wheel is much more difficult that it first appears.
First you have to knead the clay over and over again, like bread dough, to make sure all the air bubbles are out of the clay. If you leave any air bubbles in the clay, it will be next to impossible to "center" your pot on the wheel. Next comes the centering, the part of pottery that I never grew to love. You slam the clay down on the wheel, and then you work it up and down, until the clay is centered perfectly on the wheel. If the clay is even just a little bit off center, you will end up with a very strange looking pot. My teacher could center a pot in under a minute. I have to confess, that I was never able to do it in less that 4 or 5 minutes.
Only after these two steps are completed properly can you get down to actually making a pot. You open a whole in the middle and then you build the walls. My very first pot had walls that were about an inch thick.. My second pot looked better, until I inadvertently stuck my thumb into it and destroyed the whole thing. My third pot collapsed because I made the walls too thin. I think you get my point. (The following is a link a YouTube video about throwing a pot on a wheel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz-mcZvj_sE ).
Once you have the walls done, you have to cut your pot off the wheel and let it dry for a day or two. You can't let it get too dry, but you can't do anything more if hasn't dried some. Once it has hardened up you have to trim the bottom of the pot. I can't tell you how many pots I ruined at this stage of the game, I'll just say that it wasn't in the single digits. Then, once the pot has been trimmed, you fire it in a kiln for the first time, if it makes it through this stage, then you can add glaze and fire it up again. I never really knew what the pot would look like until it came out of the kiln that final time. Some were beautiful, and some never made it home with me because they landed immediately in the trash can.
The prophet Jeremiah watched a potter at work and saw in the potter's work an analogy for God's work with humans, and I too can see such an analogy, though I might go in a little different direction than Jeremiah. Clay is supple and can be reworked, as long as it hasn't yet been left to harden. When the clay is still wet, it can be molded back into a ball and reworked again and again, until it finally becomes a beautiful vessel. But once the clay becomes hard, and definitely after it has been fired in a kiln, there is no more reworking. The pot is what it will be, and if it is not a beautiful pot, it will never become one.
The questions this raises for me are these: How flexible and supple am I? Is my heart open to change and transformation, or am I set in my ways, hard and unopen to change? As we go through life, it can become easy to get stuck in our ways. We begin to think that the way that we see the world and the way we approach things is the only way. Even when our views or behavior are bringing us pain and heartbreak rather than joy and life, we continue in our behavior, because we have become hardened and unable to change.
But the good news is this, we don't have to be like those pots that I threw out before leaving the pottery studio. We don't have to be so inflexible and hardened that the only choice is to break us up and throw us away. If we open our hearts just a little bit, God the potter will rework us into the beautiful vessel he always intended for us to be. The reworking may not be easy. Indeed, it may be extraordinarily painful, but in the end you will be the pot God intended you to be.
So how do you do this? How do you open your heart to the transformative work of God? The answer comes in understanding the truth of Psalm 139: Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. . . . Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it. . . For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
"I will thank you because I am marvelously made." When you trust that God created you, every single part of you and that you are wonderful and marvelously made, then you will never fear change. You will never fear the transformation that God is working in you, because you will know that whatever new thing God is doing in you, however painful, however scary, will be ok, because God made you in the first place, you are marvelous, and God would never do any work in you that was not good and did not lead to more abundant life.
God is not done with you yet. You are like moist clay, supple and ready to be molded. You were marvelously made when you were born, and you are not done yet. As long as you are breathing, God's creative work is alive within you and God is seeking to transform your life.
Hymn of unknown origin:
You are the Potter, I am the clay
Make me and mold me
Each and everyday
You are the Potter
I am the clay
Make me and mold me, Lord
According to Your way
(You can listen to one version of this song by following this link to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnqzPt3NTRI )
Peace,
Suzannah +