God Is The Potter

O HOUSE OF ISRAEL CAN I NOT DO WITH YOU AS THIS POTTER DOES? DECLARES THE LORD. Jeremiah 18.6.

I am an amateur artist! I have a number of oil and water paintings in my house and in my surgery. One of my hobbies is to keep touching up my old paintings and make them better and more attractive! This is especially true of my old and faded paintings. By the way, I am attaching the very first painting I did when I was a medical student – a reproduction of the ‘Head of Christ’ by Warner Salman.

The reason I mentioned about my paintings is that I believe an artist is a miniature creator in the fashion of the Great Creator. He is always at work to make and remake His creation. God does that at will with all the things of nature and the universe. But when it comes to man, the pinnacle of His creation, He is unable to do it! The reason – God has given him a free will. Now, man has to allow his Creator to mould and remould, or make and remake him.

Dear believer, I trust that by the marvellous grace of God, He has granted you the wisdom and the good sense to acknowledge that you ‘like sheep, go astray all the time’ and even get marred. You know that you are constantly losing the beauty and likeness of your Maker. We are becoming unfruitful and even useless for ourselves, others and our Maker. Keep asking God to give you the humility to let Him ‘bend you, break you, mould you and remake you!’ Countless people including believers are proud and independent and want to go their own way, even when they know it is taking them to misery and destruction. They won’t let God take control of their life and destiny. They won’t let God remould them.

The Lord took the prophet Jeremiah to a potter’s house. There he was shown how the potter took the initiative to remake the clay that was marred in his hand into another vessel of beauty and usefulness. The clay didn’t resist for it couldn’t. Then, God said, “Go and tell Israel what the potter was doing to his marred pots”. The Lord asked Jeremiah to plead with His incorrigible people to let Him remake them! Yet, they refused. Dear friend, won’t you let God do His work in your life today and every day? I keep touching up my old paintings and they look more and more beautiful all the time. I know that my ‘Painter/Potter' would do the same with you and I day after day, if only we will let Him!

Pray and practise with me: Dear Lord, make me willing for You to bend me, break me, mould me and make me more and more into Your likeness everyday. Amen.