“O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.” (Jeremiah 18:6). Yesterday I wrote about painting and drawing as a way to better understand how we are made in the image of God. When it comes to painting or drawing, there is a certain degree of passivity to the materials. An artist may struggle to get the complex interplay of hues and tones just right, but the canvas more or less just sits there and receives the paint with little to no resistance. With sculpture, there is a much more active interchange between the medium and the artist. The clay can be too hard or too soft, pliant and flexible or rigid and resistant. If we are to be clay in the Potter’s hand, and if we are to be made in the image of God, then we have to decide what kind of clay we are going to be. It is all well and good to embrace a sense of personal identity and autonomy. We may even think that by resisting being manipulated by the Potter's hand, we are standing up for ourselves and keeping our options open. But if we will refuse to be shaped and molded by the Potter, then rather than becoming a beautiful vessel of the Lord, we will instead remain a shapeless lump that has neither loveliness nor function. The Lord needs us to have a strong sense of who we are and a dedication to a set of principles. After all, if we are too runny and wishy washy, then we won't hold any shape at all. But He also needs us to trust Him and have faith that whatever parts of our life He pinches or flattens or hollows out, it is all for a wise purpose. We all must sooner or later go into the kiln to be fired, and it is up to us to choose if we will submit to the shaping of the Potter’s hand and emerge from the kiln as a beautiful work of art in the likeness of God, or merely a brittle brick of misshapen clay.
