God is the Potter
God is the Potter
September 28, 2025
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4 The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. (Jeremiah 18:1-6)
God is the potter; we are the clay.
The question is not whether we are willing to be formed by the hand of God but whether we are aware of the forming that is already and always happening.
“My bones were not hidden from you,
when I was made in secret,
woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance,
and upon your scroll all of them were written,
the days that were formed before one of them was.” (Ps 139:15-16)
The ruin isn’t specified.
The ruin isn’t sugarcoated.
The ruin isn’t from the potter’s hand.
The ruin isn’t the first or the last word.
2. God is the potter; we are the clay?
7 At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. 9 And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. 11 Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you, from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.
12 But they say, “It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will.”
Trust in the Slow Work of God
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955)