Many of us have heard sermons on how the Potter can take a blob of clay, a life, and turn it into a vessel of usefulness and beauty. Today’s reading, Jeremiah 18:1-11, struck me in that the Potter was actually shaping an evil vessel. Our Father God was deliberately planning evil against Judah if they chose not to listen to Him and turn from their evil ways. A chance for the clay to choose to be useful and beautiful…A choice we have before us regularly.
The Potter takes the clay, shapes, spins, toils, then finds a less than desirable result. Unsatisfied, the Potter sweeps the clay off the wheel, and begins again, only to make something as seemed good to Him. Something useful. Something beautiful.
The New Testament reading says Jesus desires the usefulness and beauty of servanthood rather than arrogance and tyranny. Choose to submit to the hand of the Potter:
Have mercy on me…
My times are in Your Hand…
Make your face to shine upon your servant,
And in Your lovingkindness save me.
Annette Anfinrud
Links to the appointed readings for today:
