Chapter 18

A potter and clay is a potent image. And curiously, while many things have changed over time, the image still works today. The wheel is generally electrically powered now, rather than simply kicked into motion; the wheel therefore generally turns somewhat faster than its ancient ancestor; and potters have access to better clay, of far greater consistency than that available to the ancients; nevertheless, every technique used by ancient potters is easily recognized by potters (or even students of pottery) today.

So it is that Jeremiah’s prophecy comparing God to the potter and Israel to the work God produced connects deeply even now.

It’s hard to understand why God has the right to do some of the things He does. It’s tempting to say “God, hands off. Stop interfering with my life. Let me be.” But that’s not how it works. To say such a thing overestimates our own significance before God considerably – remember, using the clay metaphor, we are in fact the creation, not the creator.

Put bluntly, God as our creator has the right to do as He pleases with us. We are His creation! If God looks at us and does NOT like what He sees, He has the right to take the same lump of “clay” and make it into something else!

In the same chapter we also catch up with something else – Some of the big end of town dislike the things that Jeremiah has been saying. Apparently they have found that a can get rid of him. More about that in a few days’ time.

So what is our cash value? What can we learn from this passage?

I think that the fact that God shapes our lives, like a potter shapes a pot on a wheel, is a really encouraging image. Not only does it give a reason for some of the events that happen from time to time, it helps you to recognize that such incidents are necessary in the process of bringing each one of us to the highest degree of perfection God can bring us to.