“Then I went down to the potter’s house, and behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.”
Jeremiah18
When God looks at a person, He sees the person as he is, the person as he will be, and the person as he can be. Like the clay on the potter’s wheel, people are marred. We wear “Nobody’s Perfect” and “Don’t Judge Me” like badges of honor. In truth, they are testimony that we are so marred and so powerless to alter that fact that we would rather pretend our imperfection is without meaning.
This type of imperfection is true of nothing else in nature. We may say a tree is imperfect because it grew in a bad spot or into an ugly shape. But we don’t seriously mean it had a choice and could have done otherwise.
People talk about the “Universe” as acting with intelligence, intent, and preferences about what is good and just and what is bad and unfair—that is, acting like a mind. But when you take that step what you are really talking about is God. You may not be talking about the Christian God, but a God nonetheless.
If people are marred and not what they should be, then we must have in mind a time when that was not the case and an ideal to measure our current state against.
The lesson to Jeremiah and his people was that like the lump of marred clay, they could be remade by divine hands. The transformation will take the rest of our earthly life. God will do it for us, but only if we agree to the process.
Maranatha
