The Potter's Work

I recently finished a devotional series that talked about Jeremiah 18. This passage of Scripture tells the story of Jeremiah visiting a potter's house and receiving a word from the Lord while he watched the potter work clay on his wheel.

"So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him." Jer. 18:3-4

I've read this passage many times and in the past I often focused on a relatively positive theme that we are the clay in the Lord's hands and He is shaping us according to His will. But this time, as I read this passage I was struck by verse 4. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. The potter was attempting to fashion the clay into something, but the clay resisted and the potter had to abandon his original purpose for the clay and make it into something else.

How eye opening that should be for each for us. God has a purpose for us, He has a design in mind for us and He is constantly shaping and molding us into that design. But if we resist His crafting hands, if we refuse to submit to His shaping, if we remain hard and stubborn, attempting in our own way to force the potter to shape us into what we think we should be, He may have to abandon His plan for us and allow us to be something less than we could have been.

We all instantly get the message when we hear something like, "can the clay tell the potter what to create?" And we think we get it. But how often do we resist the refining and shaping hands of God in our lives? How often do we question His techniques when the shaping becomes uncomfortable, even painful? Perhaps, we never come out and question His right to be the potter, but we certainly question His techniques.

But we are only the clay. We can't see beyond the spinning wheel we're sitting on. We may think the potter's hands are too hard, too demanding, asking too much of us. But the hands that shape and mold us, are the same hands that keep us from falling. God has a design for us, He has a purpose for His clay and if we submit to His shaping, then we will one day become something glorious for Him.