The Clay Pot

 Jeremiah 18:4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

A few weeks back my daughter came home with a list of things in which she could do for a class project.  The class project was to create your own artifact correlating to what they had been learning about.  My daughter decides on making a clay pot.   My daughter is the creative type so she used a simple mixture from right out of the cupboard to make the clay.  She shaped it into a pot and sat it up on a shelf to dry for a few days.  She then pulled out her paint and painted it a brown and put some kind of design on it.   The only thing I thought was missing was the gloss that most clay pots have when you buy them.  I myself was doubtful that she wouldn’t  get a good grade on it just because of that cause I had an inkling that some other students project  was going to look nice and glossy like it had either been made a pottery place or their parents had a big influence on the project.  By chance parent teacher conference happened to be that week and I got to see all the other kids’ projects.  I myself was impressed with some of the pottery I seen at glance but deep in my heart all I could think was that these children’s   parents had helped them and not given their child a chance to show their own personal creativity.  When I got to my daughters pot it was all crumbled in pieces.  I felt awful but the teacher reassured me that the reason that it was in pieces was because all the children had been playing with it. Why you might ask? Because they were all interested on how she made the clay all by herself.   My daughter got an A on her project.  Her teacher said that it was creative and knew that she actually made it herself.  

In Jeremiah 18:1-6 God tells Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house. Once he got to the potters house he observed the potter making a clay pot that fell apart in his hand so he begins to reshape it. As Jeremiah is watching God spoke to him telling Jeremiah  as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand.   Only God can shape and reshape us.   We are the clay and He is the Potter.  He is the one who created us and can mold us.  It doesn’t matter if we are broken in spirit because only He can put us back together.  Sometimes God breaks us down to build us up into something bigger and better