Clay in God’s hands
“Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand.” (Jeremiah 18:6b)
Have you ever stopped to ponder what has made you the person you are today? As you have such a reflection you likely think about circumstances or people who have guided or shaped you into the person that you are today.
While that is certainly true, our verse for this week reminds us that it is actually someone else who has actually been guiding and shaping us – that someone is God himself.
While we may credit, and in some sense rightfully so, a family member, someone we work(ed) with or some other human influence or earthly circumstance, our Bible verse for this week reminds us and helps us to understand the bigger picture. Any person or situation which we want to credit was and is a tool in God’s hand that God used and directed to shape the “clay” of each of our own individual lives.
Stop and ponder that amazing fact for a moment. It is not fate or luck or an accident that things in your life have gone the way they are and you are the person you are today. Just like a potter carefully crafts a piece of clay and often reshapes and reworks that piece of clay until they are happy with the finished product; in the very same way God shapes and very likely reshapes and reworks you and your life using people and circumstances to influence and direct you to be who you are and who he knows and wants you to be.
There are several things to ponder and remember with all of this.
Have you ever stopped to think that God is not done with you yet? Do you realize and understand that some of those moments in life when you thought things were going south, may have actually been times when God was reshaping or reworking you into the person, personality and instrument he wants you to be.
Something that is even more humbling and astounding is to realize that very likely each one of us has been an instrument in God’s hand to some way, somehow shape and form people in our lives. They may be people that we are intimately familiar with and on the other hand we may be used in shaping someone that we never knew and had no idea we were being used to influence and affect them.
No doubt as you are absorbing and pondering all this, there are very likely some questions you would like to ask God about why or how he has or is shaping you. Before you get too anxious to ask those questions, keep in mind the words of Romans 11:34-36: “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”.
In those verses Paul reminds us of many of the attributes of God – all of which have our best interest in mind. While God is all-knowing and all-powerful, he is also loving and full of grace and mercy. When you wrap all of those attributes of God together, you understand that he has some amazing things in mind and our puny minds dare not question or doubt, but rather trust and believe that he is shaping us for his ultimate best purpose.