The Potter

The potter is a wonderful biblical image of God. Job reminded God that His hands had shaped him, moulded him like clay, clothed him with skin and flesh, knit him together and given him life (Job 10:8-12).

Obeying God’s command, Jeremiah went down to the potter’s house and watched the potter working at his wheel trying unsuccessfully to re-shape a marred pot. Eventually the potter took the clay from the wheel and began to form the clay into a different pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. The Hebrew word for ‘marred’ is better translated ‘ruined’. The flaw was in the clay, not the potter’s skill. No doubt Jeremiah watched in awe as the potter purified the clay and re-shaped it into something beautiful. Jeremiah was a lone prophet in desperate circumstances when he went to the potter’s house. The re-shaped pot was a symbol of hope – God would re-mould, re-make, and redeem His people.

The heavenly potter may be calling you by name today, seeking your attention and waiting for an answer to His question, ‘Can I not do with you as this potter does? … Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand’. Hard clay can’t be re-shaped. The potter may have to reduce your mis-shaped pot to fine clay, water it with His truth and His love to make it re-mouldable, and then put it back on the potter’s wheel to re-shape it.

The re-shaping of a life yielded to Him will always be done in the way that He knows is best for us and for His glory. The biblical potter is skilled and sensitive when He handles the clay because, as Isaiah reminds us, He is also our Father, ‘O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter. We are all the work of your hand’ (Isaiah 65:8). He does His work as a skilful potter with a Father’s tender heart.

Kintsugi is a Japanese form of ceramic art – it means ‘Golden joinery’. The pieces of a broken pot are fixed together with resin and then powdered with gold. By this process broken pots which are regarded as worthless are transformed to become more beautiful and valuable than before they were broken. This isn’t a quick fix, but a process of a skilled craftsman at work – a picture of what God does in our lives when we yield to the potter’s hands.

Broken pots, broken hearts, broken lives – Jesus came to redeem, restore, and re-make, us. He did this when His body was broken on the cross for us. He doesn’t simply do a repair job. He makes broken people new, and transforms them into His image by the power of His Spirit. This is the life to the full which He promised to those who follow Him (John 10:10).