How God Forms Us

January 26, 2023

To learn how the Lord forms us as pots, we turn to the prophet Jeremiah. 'These are the words which came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 'Go down at once to the potter's house and there I will tell you what I have to say. ' So I went down to the potter's house and found him working at the wheel. Now and then a vessel he was making out of the clay would be spoilt in his hands, and then he would start again and mold it into another vessel to his liking. And then the word of the Lord came to me: 'Can I not deal with you, Israel, says the Lord, as the potter deals with his clay?' What the potter intended to do was to make a Ming vase. So here is the potter with the clay and the wheel, and he intends to make the best.  And the clay somehow or other hardens, perhaps too rapidly, or it doesn't harden sufficiently and it falls down from the wheel.  Does the potter neglect the clay?  No, he picks it up and molds it into another vessel. God does not abandon us poor pots, He picks us up and makes us according to His liking, whatever it happens to be. We are not abandoned. But He does have an ideal just the same.