Several years ago, I taught music at one of the large inner-city high schools in Providence, RI.  Two doors down from my room, was the art room.  I was friends with the art teacher, and every once in awhile on my planning period, I would stick my head in his door to see what medium the students were working on.  On this one particular day, he was teaching pottery – and asked if I wanted to join the class.  I would have loved to have taken the class for the whole term, but was happy to be involved at least that day.  My take-away from that class, for one thing, was how I could make whatever I wanted out of that lump of clay, and even remold and reshape it.   It reminded me of the Master Potter – Whom I tend to want to become at times – forgetting that I am just the lump of clay and that whatever He wants to make of me, and however He wants to shape me is always going to be for my best.  His only interest is of me.

In Jeremiah 18:1-4, we see Jeremiah watching the potter, seeing that the clay was marred and being reshaped into another pot – and then realizing that the potter is God, and that he was the clay.  God is working with His capable hands and fingers to mold and shape us into the vessel He has in mind.  And, He never produces two exact same vessels.  Through my life, I have wanted to be ‘this one’ and ‘that one’ thinking they were more valuable than I – more attractive, more important, more talented, more spiritual, and so on.  I wanted to be the potter!  Isaiah, in 64.8 said – “But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are our potter; we are all the work of Your hand”.   You would think that would settle it, but from time to time, I kind of forgot even Paul’s words in Romans 9:20,21 – “The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it?  Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?”  In The Message, it refers to these two vessels as ‘one being a vase for holding flowers and the other, a pot for cooking beans’.

When I finally realized that our great and mighty Creator, truly is the Potter – and truly, I am just the lump of clay – and that He truly knows what is best for each of us, I have more than welcomed His ‘breaking’ me and starting over.  This ‘common pot for cooking beans’ has needed not only to be ‘broken’, but reshaped and remolded so many times.  More than anything, I want to look like a product of my Master.  My Master Potter.  Uniquely His design, specifically for me.