Go Down To The Potter’s House
The Potter At Work
The great Jeremiah provided my daily reading a few days ago:
THESE are the words which came to Jeremiah from the LORD: Go down now to the potter’s house, and there I shall tell you what I have to say. I went down to the potter’s house, where I found him working at the wheel. Now and then a vessel he was making from the clay would be spoilt in his hands, and he would remould it into another vessel to his liking.
This hit me pretty hard. I took it personally, though Jeremiah eventually expands the passage into a calling for his people to be shaped into a new nation, to adopt a wholly new way of living as a people. But think about it: Isn’t God constantly at work shaping each one of us? If we can imagine the potter at work, hunched over the wheel, a lot of things will change in our lives. There is need of surrender to the maker’s steady hands.
I began to ask how I might place myself more fully in the potter’s hands? Oh boy, that’s a huge task for modern people like me, those who have been schooled in self-sufficiency, independence, a deep belief that I can do the job better than anyone. And who is this potter anyway?
I’ve been reading a bunch of people lately who are suggesting that the way we handle those small things in our everyday lives—things like checking our phone first thing in the morning, our obsession about what we eat, whether the knock on the door is an intrusion or an opportunity, how much we participate in the hatred spewed across the screens of our daily news—in all these small ways we shape the habits of our lives. These habits can tell us whether we’re in the potter’s hands or not.
Flannery O’Connor once said we’ve got to “push as hard at the age that pushes against you.” And Tish Harrison Warren, in her lovely new Liturgy Of The Ordinary, adds that Christians are called to be an alternative people, marked by love and joy and peace, kindness and humility. But “though we believe deeply in the gospel . . . we often feel like the way we spend our days looks very similar to our unbelieving neighbors—with perhaps a bit of extra spirituality thrown in.”
What if we begin to change our lives in the little things? What if, Warren suggests, we “invite God into the day and just sit. Silent. Sort of listening. Sort of just sitting.” What if we begin by saying, praying, that God has made this day: “Today, he is the maker and giver of all good things.” Something like this may be the way to begin to surrender to the potter’s hands.
I’m very intrigued with this notion of becoming an alternative people. That’s been my goal all my life, to be an alternative person, to help lead and shape the alternative communities in which I was involved. But O’Connor is right: “The age” pushes hard to define what kind of person and what kind of community we will be. Will we be shaped by the potter’s hands? Or will we behave as if this potter-thing is a bunch of nonsense. We’re on our own to live however we choose.
I am deeply concerned these days whether our Christian organizations—whether churches or schools or universities or ministries or even families—can remain Christian as “the age” pushes hard against us. I know the details are messy and complex, but we cannot remain an alternative people unless we are willing to be shaped by the potter’s hands. This will mean we must be shaped even in the small things, from the vitality of our worship and prayer together, but as well how we clean our residence halls or serve the coffee, how we keep our landscaping and plant our flowers, and ultimately the standards of living by which we choose to live.
If we are going to surrender to the potter’s hands, both personally and communally, we must come closer to the potter, like every morning, pondering his words, feeling his hands shaping our day, seeking not to become misshapen by the age that pushes hard against us. This is the way the potter will begin to shape each one of us and these precious communities of an alternative people. It begins with us, in the hands of the potter, as we allow the potter to reshape the small things, as we let the potter make us into something new.