Shaping and Molding Us

Jeremiah 18:1-6 New Life Version (NLV)

The Pot-Maker and the Clay

18 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, 2 “Go down to the pot-maker’s house, and there I will let you hear My words.” 3 So I went down to the pot-maker’s house, and saw him making one on the wheel. 4 But the pot he was making of clay did not come out like he wanted it. So the pot-maker used the clay to make another pot that pleased him.

5 Then the Word of the Lord came to me saying, 6 “O people of Israel, can I not do with you as this potmaker has done?” says the Lord. “Like the clay in the pot-maker’s hand, so are you in My hand, O people of Israel.

Mackenzie, my 8 year old daughter, loves crafts.  She will spend hours perfecting each movement she makes on the pieces she is creating.  Tonight she brought me a ceramic pumpkin that she had been painting.  With tears in her eyes, she showed me her precious  pumpkin.  The black she had used for the eyes had bled into the orange.  She had tried to fix it, but that had made it worse.  I took her precious piece of art, sat with her, and helped her paint over the black traces.  It will need another coat of orange tomorrow, but she saw hope in her creation.  She saw that the mistakes could be fixed and made new.  She went to bed pleased with what she had done.

God is consistently molding us and making us new.  We may spend so much time trying to cover up our mistakes or decisions by trying to make them right.  Sometimes that works, but other times our “fixing the problem” can make it worse.  If we hand our problems to our Father, He will take our mistakes and mold them into something beautiful.  With that, we will see hope.  We can know we can be made new again.  We can rest our heads pleased with what He has done.  

This sounds easy, but unless you truly hand over your problems to Him and lay them at His feet, He cannot make it new.  We have to be willing to give Him control of our next steps.  We may not understand the way the Lord is molding a situation, but if we trust and obey, it will turn out to be a beautiful, perfect piece of pottery.  

Be Blessed!