PUT BACK TOGETHER

Jeremiah 18:4 “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 process of working clay into pottery is truly a lot more detailed and complicated than many of us know. It is a long process of working, shaping, baking, painting, and re-baking the clay. But even more amazing… that is only half of it. Before the clay can ever be worked by our hands, the clay itself needs to be prepared.

The clay that comes out of the earth is very raw and filled with imperfections. If you were to take clay right out of the ground, form it and fire it, most of it would either crumble or explode because the imperfections inside of it. In its natural state, clay is not ready to be made into anything. The clay must be filtered, softened, and left for a long while to resettle and become the smooth and pliable clay that you and I would recognize. Then it is placed on a table and beaten with a wooden mallet. The Potter does this to remove any air bubbles that might be trapped in the clay. If he doesn’t, the air bubbles will form a pocket that will produce a weak spot and cause the vessel to be fragile and unusable, or in extreme cases, explode when it is being fired in the kiln.

Clay in its original state is worthless to work with. In its natural state, clay is not ready to be made into anything. Now, in our scripture, the analogy is spelled out for us quite clearly. All throughout the bible this same illustration is clear. We are the clay, and God is the potter.

Like the clay, we are worthless in our natural condition – in our natural state. We are not ready to be made into anything. However, God is able to see the vessels that we can be, therefore, he begins the very long process that will bring us to a place of usefulness. He begins the way any potter begins with clay, by digging us out and washing us clean.

Just like any potter, if during the spinning process, the pot becomes mis-shaped, the potter does not throw the clay away and start fresh with a new piece. How could he? He has already invested too much time in salvaging the clay from the soil and preparing it for use. He is a very patient potter, always seeing the finished work of art before it is actually completed. He is willing to wait on the clay. Always working with it and not against it to bring it to the place the potter wants it to be.

That is the main lesson of our scripture text. God took Jeremiah, the young leader to see the potter’s shop. He witnessed the failing of the clay, the misshapenness and imperfections, and he saw the potter instinctively reach down and reshape that flawed clay. The clay would rebel time after time and go its own way. But the potter did not give up on it. He kept working with it, kept building it up, and kept picking it up every time it fell.

The potter stops for nothing. No matter how much we resist. No matter how much we rebel. No matter how much we want to go our own way. The potter does not throw us away. He continues to work with us. He is always working to bring us to the place that he has called us to go. He knows that in time we will be made into something beautiful.