The Master Potter

Aug 14, 2023

So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 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.

Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.

- Jeremiah 18:3-6

Sociologist Brene Brown’s TED talk on the subject of vulnerability has accumulated more than 60 million hits.

A significant factor in its popularity is the plain truth that, as much as we fight it, we long for the freedom to admit we are broken.

And we are not alone in being broken. As Brown says,

“The truth is… we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health diagnosis, one serious illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair from being “those people” - the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our children play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door.”

Every one of us has voices that fill our minds, telling us to keep appearances, because we believe that if we don’t, our life will simply fall apart. As a result, we hide behind masks, we cover our pain, we become abusers of medication, slaves of financial debt, followers of fads, and participants of loneliness.

We don’t realize that the only solution for being broken is… brokenness. We must be willing to recognize and embrace that we are broken people.

But, as Jeremiah tells us in Jeremiah 18: 3-6, God is the potter at the wheel, the One who makes broken whole, the One who forms these lumps of clay that we are into something beautiful, just as He sees fit. Not one bit of the broken pieces gets tossed aside and discarded, for God takes us as we are and re-molds us into what is best to Him.