Midweek meditation from Pastor Dave August 7, 2024

Our older son Noah spent four weeks this summer at an archaeological site in southern Turkiye. The team he was with were excavating ruins of Roman fortifications along the Mediterranean Sea. It was hot and hard work. So much of what they uncovered were pieces of broken pottery – bowls, pots, plates. This got me thinking about Jeremiah.

We have been in Jeremiah lately in our schedule of reading through the Bible this year. In Jeremiah 18, the Lord sends the prophet to a potter’s house, where he finds the potter at work at his wheel. The vessel the potter was making out of clay was spoiled, so “he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me: 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” (Jer 18:4-6).

When we met up with Noah and toured around Turkiye together, one afternoon we visited a pottery studio. Each of the boys took a turn at the pottery wheel, shaping the wet clay into bowls. One of the bowls became a little misshapen, but the potter worked with the clay and helped shape it into something that would work.

In one of our hymns, we sing,

Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!

Thou art the potter; I am the clay.

Mold me and make me after thy will,

While I am waiting, yielded and still. (UM Hymnal 382)

But even though we may sing “have thine own way,” so often we act “have mine own way.” So did the people in Jeremiah’s day. They said, “we will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will” (Jer 18:12). So the Lord instructs Jeremiah in the next chapter to go back to the potter and buy a jug so that he can smash it in their sight as a sign of the disaster that will come upon them because of their stubborn willfulness. And sure enough, that’s what happened. And as Noah has discovered, the earth is littered with bits of broken pottery.

So let us learn the lesson of the potter and the clay. Let us remember which one of these we are. Let us not let ourselves become brittle and hard and dry, but seek to be soft and supple, moldable, shapable. Let us, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, make our prayer not my will but thine be done (Matt 26:39, Mark 14:36). And let us sing this song as well (this song that we close our midweek Vespers services singing):

Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.

Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.

Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.

Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. (UM Hymnal 393)