The Reworking

"And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do." - Jeremiah 18:4

Ceramics is one subject I have never been able to master - along with Chemistry and Math.  When I started college with the intent of becoming an art teacher, I had to take a Ceramics course.  I excelled in a variety drawing courses, color theory, and drudged through printmaking, but with Ceramics, I quit. The smell of the clay down in the very bottom of the giant vat they had it marinating in at the college - it was like sewage and made my stomach turn. I didn't have the patience to work the wheel and clay would wobble wildly; spattering slip all over the studio. My hands felt dry all the time and even though I had washed them, clay was still caked in between my fingers or clinging to a nail.  I grumbled constantly when I could not manage to make anything remotely beautiful and every piece I molded ended up as heavy as an anvil, no good and fell apart.

Jeremiah saw a potter working with clay to create a pot; but somethiing went wrong in shaping it.  The piece became flawed and unusable.  Thankfully, the potter started again, squeezing the clay back into his hands to begin shaping it into another vessel to his liking.

Now let's paint a picture, because obviously, I am no good at pottery crafting.  Think of yourself as a seventies art class ashtray a kid made as a project.  The sides are wonky, the glaze is definitely avocado green and patchy.  The dish barely looks like a saucer, much less an ashtray, but it is well-loved by Linda (someone's mom).  Through the years it has become caked with yellowy-brown tar and forgotten in the bottom of a water-stained cardboard box next to a cracked vinyl bowling ball bag, loose dusty playing cards and Linda's moth-eaten silk scarf collection.

It's impossible to make something beautiful from that chartreuse monstrosity, right?  One day, at a garage sale, the retro-green-forgotten-class assignment is sold to a budding artist who washes  away all the tar grease from its edges, reinventing it as a Mid-century Modern paintbrush holder.

This is how God sees us and knows our potential to rework us.  We're not just an out-of-date, slimy greenish-brown ashtray, but a functional piece of art.  We can be reimagined into something new even when we feel we have no purpose. We were made to be useful. A well-loved ashtray from middle-school art class or a delicate vase are both carefully crafted with the precise pressure to the form and ratio of water to clay. The clay yields to the potter's hands, transforming into the vessel envisioned by His design and plan.

"But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand." Isaiah 64:8