God told Jeremiah, “Up on your feet! Go to the potter’s house. When you get there, I’ll tell you what I have to say.”
So I went to the potter’s house, and sure enough, the potter was there, working away at his wheel. Whenever the pot the potter was working on turned out badly, as sometimes happens when you are working with clay, the potter would simply start over and use the same clay to make another pot.
Then God’s Message came to me “Can’t I do just as this potter does, people of Israel?” God’s Decree! “Watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you, people of Israel. At any moment I may decide to pull up a people or a country by the roots and get rid of them.
But if they repent of their wicked lives, I will think twice and start over with them. At another time I might decide to plant a people or country, but if they don’t cooperate and won’t listen to me, I will think again and give up on the plans I had for them.
“So, tell the people of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem my Message: ‘Danger! I’m shaping doom against you, laying plans against you. Turn back from your doomed way of life. Straighten out your lives.’ “But they’ll just say, ‘Why should we? What’s the point? We’ll live just the way we’ve always lived, doom or no doom.’”
Jeremiah 18 1-12 The Message Bible
Has anybody had a go at pottery? it’s difficult!
Let’s walk down and have a look at this potter. It’s pretty dark – the narrow streets cut out the sun and there in his tiny front room sits the potter at his wheel. His hand is on the wheel and his foot on the simple treadle and he casts the wet. pliable, slippery clay on the turning wheel. With his fingers he shapes the pot. We look around him and on the shelf behind him and the floor around him are more finished articles.
Suddenly without warning the clay splits. The foot comes off the treadle, the wheel stops, but he doesn’t throw the clay away. He uses it again, presses it into a lump and almost instantly the wheel turns again and we see another vessel taking shape. The same clay the same potter! And as we look around at all those finished pots we say to ourselves it’s funny but they’re probably all made from spoiled clay.
Jeremiah a prophet from God painted that picture for us because his head was full of the great mess his people had made of things. They had quarrelled over the land given to them, refused to listen to God’s message brought by the prophets, they’d become bigoted, defeated and homeless. And with all this on his mind he had gone to the potters house and seen spoiled clay being remade into beautiful vessels.
When you and I break on the wheel of life through failure, regret, ill health, doubt God still values us and gives us a chance to show our worth. If you like it’s all about :
THE ME I AM MEANT TO BE
You will most probably have seen the news reports about the men rescued from a caravan park in Bedfordshire who had been held in slavery some for as long as 15 years. Slavery is not a word we use much these days but perhaps we might know what it is to be a slave to some addiction, some impulse, something in our lives that holds us firmly in captivity. It holds us back and holds us down.
God wants us to flourish. Jesus said I have come that you may have life in all it’s fullness. He wants us to flourish to be part of his purpose for the world. To flourish so that others can be encouraged, seeds can be planted, sick people helped, He wants us to flourish as a community that grows and builds itself up in love.
Jesus once said that with God all things are possible and no matter how we may have messed up the next step towards God is always possible. When He hung on the cross His words to the thief next to Him were “Today you will be with me in paradise” There is always a next step open to becoming “The Me I am meant to be”
THE ME I THINK I SHOULD BE:
Look again at the floor of the potter’s house; look at the clay ready for use. The potter doesn’t expect to turn it into vessels all of the same shape. He makes and then remakes, not always what He wants but what he can. And God say’s to us I’ll not cast you aside simply let me shape you differently.
Have you ever said or thought IF ONLY? It comes when we have a me that we think we should be. If only I had more skills, if only I had more brains in my head, if only I had more hair, if only this or that hadn’t happened when I was younger. If only I had more time to pray like so and so if only I could be as successful, popular, as good a leader and before we know it we’re in the comparison business at odds with the me that God made us to be.
Henri Nouwen wrote: Spiritual greatness has nothing to do with being greater than others. It has everything to do with being as great as each of us can be.
I regularly have the privilege of conducting services in celebration of someone’s life. Recently I spoke to a daughter about her late Father and asked about his life. She said there’s not a lot to say he never went on holiday he worked in the same factory for over forty years he suffered from polio as a child so was not eligible for service in the forces alongside his mates he kept a few pigs and hens and anything else that needed shelter and then she said : “But he was a good Dad who loved us and our home was where we always felt safe and secure”. This person wouldn’t rewrite the history books but those few words said it all to me. The way he loved his family had shaped his soul and delighted God.
It’s not what we think we should be but what God has planned for us. we must accept the vessels we are. That’s not to say we can’t improve certain things , that by the grace of God we can’t achieve more than we ever thought possible but that in the last resort we are as God made us.
THE ME I PRETEND TO BE:
Perhaps you remember that wonderful clip in the vicar of Dibley where dippy Alice goes into that long monologue about the virtue of a product called I can’t believe it’s not butter and by the end everyone is totally baffled as to whether or not it really is butter.
Something that pretends to be what it is not. Perhaps just occasionally and just a tiny bit we have pretended to be something we are not. An interview, a date, and we feel we need to project an image.
God designed you to be you and me to be me. He will not ask when our life is over why we weren’t a Moses, or Desmond Tutu, or Saint Teresa. He might well ask why you weren’t you!!!
We don’t have to pretend that we pray more often than we do, or know the bible better than we do. We don’t have to pretend with God. Pretending is hard work and we’ll slip up anyway. To become the “me I want to be”, I have to be honest about the “me that I am”.
THE ME OTHER PEOPLE WANT ME TO BE;
There are so many pressures on us telling us we need change. The bossTells us to be more productive – the health clubtells us to be more fit. – the credit card companytell us we should be more in debt. We should watch more T.V. – eat more food – visit your dentist more often. Everybody has an agenda for us. This is “the me” that other people want us to be.
When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robbin Island, he was issued a pair of shorts because his captors wanted him to be identified as a boy not a man, People in power over him wanted him to accept a racist society, People who suffered with him wanted him to hate their oppressors.
Mandela was neither of those.27 years in prison saw him become increasingly committed to justice, opposing hatred. By the end of his captivity his guards were won over by his life and eventually he was to lead his country to peace through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
God didn’t make you or me to be Nelson Mandela He made you to be you and me to be me.
It’s not what others want us to be but what God wants us to be.
Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, “Why did you shape me like this?” Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans?
If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right? Either or both happens to Jews, but it also happens to the other people. Hosea put it well: I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies; I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved. In the place where they yelled out, “You’re nobody!” they’re calling you “God’s living children.”
Romans 9; 20-26 The Message Bible