Week 2 - Day 6 Jeremiah 18 1-6

The Potter's Vessel.

This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD: Arise and go down to the potter’s house; there you will hear my word. I went down to the potter’s house and there he was, working at the wheel. Whenever the vessel of clay he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again, making another vessel of whatever sort he pleased. Then the word of the LORD came to me: Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done?—oracle of the LORD. Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel.

Again we experience a parallel between ancient Celtic Spirituality and the Hebrew Testament on creation imagery. The clay begins as dirt moistened and sculpted into shape either on a table or potter's wheel. Whether the creator creates a shape to animate into a living being or throws a pot to serve as a body to serve as the dwelling for a soul, we have a clear understanding we come from dirt and to dirt we shall return. 

The important observation I have about the thrown pot is that while pots can be similar, no two are identical. I was recently at a craft market and observed a collection of clay cups offered for sale by a potter. They were enough like to suggest they were a set of the same kind but when each cup was carefully examined, more and more differences between each cup could but seen. So it is with humans.

We can appear enough like to be identical as in the case of twins but we are all still unique, individually made even if we all come the same lump of clay. 

What runs through my mind now are the words from Psalm 139. We are wonderfully made. We are. Truly. Whether we have handles or not or fluted sides or not we all have the same purpose to know, love and serve our creator. 

Another thought comes from Meister Eckhart. If we have been created to be vessels, what we hold as contents in the pot that represent ourselves defines how we serve him. If we fill the pot with water or fluids of our own choosing, how can we still have room to hold the living water offered by Jesus to the Samaritan Women. Eckhart would have us literally empty ourselves of what we think we are so there would be room to accept what God offers us, to be in union with him. 

Sometimes a pot can become broken so what we have placed inside it will drain away. We can no longer hold either ourselves or God and cannot do so until the potter repairs us. His hands can reshape the clay to where it can again hold life even if we appear differently that we did before being broken. Appearance is of no matter. That we can serve the purpose of the potter does matter. It is everything to the same broad expense defined by God when he tells us to call him "I am." He just is. There is no way to describe the full picture of a painting with no frame.