5 Then the word of the Lord came to me.

6 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 18:5-6

I love this old hymn by Adlaide Pollard

Have thine own way, Lord, Have thine own way.

Thou are the Potter, I am the clay.

As humans, we tend to think of ourselves as creatures of our own making, that we are the combined result of our experiences and relationships. And I guess if you remove God from the equation, that might be true. But how is it possible to remove the Creator of all that we know from the equation regarding all that we are?

It is a truly miraculous thing that we can awake each new day and give ourselves back over to our Creator. By acknowledging our flaws and shortcomings, we can put ourselves back on the potter’s wheel, and let God not only reshape those imperfections, but also see how He can take the broken pieces of our lives, and remake us into something beautiful and worthy of serving Him in this fragmented world.

Just as God spoke through Jeremiah to the nation of Israel, God speaks to us. We acknowledge that He is the potter, and we are but clay, waiting to be molded into whatever God needs to serve His children.

But it does not work if we cannot embrace that relationship. When we try to shape our own lives, careers, relationships, and standards, the imperfections become obviously clear. We tend to come off as selfserving, heartless, and conceited. By allowing God to shape our lives, we become the finest porcelain in the hands of the Master Craftsman that can be used to meet the needs of the hungry, thirsty, and downtrodden of this world.

When our desire to be clay becomes our imperative, we relinquish the role of potter with the full understanding that He is the Master Craftsman, and nothing we do on our own, even for God, can begin to compare to what God can accomplish through us as He shapes us and molds us into vessels of His design and choosing. We may never be able to change the world on our own, but God can certainly change the world through us.