Soft Clay

Daily Byte

Have you ever seen a potter at his or her wheel? Pottery-making is a difficult and fragile but beautiful craft. The potter brings forth something new from the earth - literally from a wet lump of clay. The potter works tenderly with the clay, crafting it into a vessel of beauty and usefulness. Throughout the Bible, God is likened to a potter and human beings are the clay, always being formed and re-formed in the masterful hands of the potter. The world teaches us to be hard, but God calls us to be soft clay in the hands of an able potter. As you read and pray the following litany, let your heart become soft to the shaping hands of the Potter. Think of all the ways that God might be making you new.

Creator God, in the beginning when we are formless,
Empty and without shape,
You pull us from the depths of the earth,
You breathe into us the breath of life,
And whisper into our unformed hearts
“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”
And with the skill, heart, and fury of a potter,
You throw us on your wheel.

Slowly you spin us on your wheel.
At times our incompleteness stings,
The muddy clay seeps into our wounds,
Your touch seems harsh.
We cry out for healing,
“How long, O God, will you take to overhaul my heart?”
But we must be beaten and broken,
We must first be centered before made beautiful.

You dip your hands into an ocean
Of living water,
And run your fingertips along our edges
You fill the cracks; you smooth the seams,
You restore our souls.
As we spin faster, even the wheel cries out in praise
We will sing of your Love, Oh Lord.

Your gentle touch fashions
In us the beauty of your image.
Your refiner’s fire bakes in us
The heat of your love.
And even in our weary words and half-kept promises,
In our tired backs and weathered hands,
Still you are ever-crafting in us
An image of your grace.

As we go today, let us remember
that our hands were crafted for healing,
Our heart for loving,
And our feet to leave in abundance the footprints of Christ.
But we are yet unfinished.
And as the clay belongs to the potter, so we belong to God. Amen.

Scripture

Jeremiah 18: 1-6

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.

Then the word of the Lord came to me: ‘Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done?’ says the Lord. ‘Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.’