The Shaping of Our Lives in Faith
September 7, 2025
“The word that came to Jeremiah to the Lord: Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.”
When Jeremiah went to the potter’s house, he didn’t just see a craft. He saw an extraordinary image of hope. The clay that was being turned on the wheel would rise tall and sometimes collapse in on itself. This was the image God wanted to press upon the people of Judah. If the House of Israel followed his ways, nations would rise, if they disobeyed God’s ways, nations could fall. Ultimately, there was hope that things could be repaired and mended and all would be well.
And it’s an image relevant to us today. We are the clay. God is the potter. Clay is soft, malleable and vulnerable to every touch. Just like us. We often think of ourselves as invincible or make ourselves rigid, seemingly infallible. Yet life has a way of impacting us that can reshape, sometimes shatter us. We are fragile, but Jeremiah reminds us, that as clay in the potter’s hands we are held, molded and reshaped, works in progress. We can be damaged, broken and flawed. But there is always hope, because the potter is always ready to hold us, whole or broken, fragile or strong. When the vessel collapsed in front of Jeremiah, the potter did not throw the clay aside. He pressed it back down, moistened it and began again. The same clay. The same hands. A new purpose. God does not discard what is marred. God remakes. God reshapes. God reimagines us into vessels of beauty and usefulness.
Some time ago I saw a pair of lamps in a store window. I followed my own rule about impulse buying and walked on but those lamps stayed on my mind. A week or two later I drove back to the town I’d seen them in to purchase them. As Marie Kondo, organizer extraordinaire would say, they sparked joy for me. And still did to this day, until a couple of weeks ago when my adorable dog Gracie in a strange moment of excitement, jumped off of her mat, bumped the table my lamp was on, scared herself, leapt in the air and hit the table again which then made my lamp topple. It was like a slow motion, movie. My son and I had been sitting chatting, and both of us leapt off of our seats, to grab the lamp before it hit the floor. But the lamp was falling away from us, and we both watched with horror as it fell to the floor and broke into pieces. We rescued what we could, and I put all the bits in a brown outdoor waste bag figuring it was destined for the dump. I put it right in the garage. Couldn’t stand to see it I was so upset.
I spent some days trying to track down another one since it was part of a set but no luck. My daughter said to me one day, Mom why don’t we do what the Japanese do with broken ceramics? You know, Kintsugi. It means “golden joinery”. This art form involves mending broken pieces of pottery using urushi lacquer mixed or dusted with powdered gold, silver or platinum, which highlights the breakage and makes it a valuable part of the objects history rather than trying to hide it. So, we did that, and we were able to repair the lamp and now I have a story to tell when you see the golden cracks in it.
In her book, The Cup of Our Life, Joyce Rupp writes: “…I have found the cup to be a powerful teacher for my inner life. The ordinariness of the cup reminds me that my personal transformation occurs in the common crevices of each day. The cup is an apt image for the inner processes of growth. The cup has been a reminder of my spiritual thirst. As I’ve held it, filled it, drunk from it, emptied it and washed it, I’ve learned that it is through my ordinary human experiences that my thirst for God is quenched. In the cup I see life, with its emptiness, fullness, brokenness, flaws, and blessings.”
Ceramic lamps, cups or ordinary people like you and I, we are all such vessels, varying shapes, sizes, colours, used for different things but still ready to hold blessings and brokenness, beauty and scar, ready to be filled and sometimes empty, all in the hands of the Creator who first imagined us when we were knit in our mothers wombs. As David’s psalm proclaims, “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there…I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. “ Like clay in a Potter’s hand.
During the last week of August Rev. Gary, Margot White and I helped lead the vacation Bible school for about 30 children. The 7-9 year old group that I led were always bursting into some song called Soda Pop from a recent Netflix movie KPop Demon Hunters that came out this past summer. It is being heralded as the most watched film in Netflix history and a cultural phenomenon. It’s an animated film in the tradition of anime. The premise is that long ago demons prayed on humans and fed their souls to their ruler. Three women become “demon hunters’ to seal the demons away with a magical barrier produced by their singing voices and this continues for generations. Ultimately their goal is to create a Golden Honmoon that will banish demons from the human world permanently. The current KPop singing group led by Rumi continues this work against demons but unknown to anyone else Rumi is herself half demon evident by the tattoo like patterns on her arms. She had spent her life hiding in shame and fear that others would find out and harm her.
These patterns could symbolize shame associated with a variety of experiences: depression, queerness, trauma, neurodivergence or being biracial. In a final, The Voice style battle, Rumi’s tattoos are seen yet she is able to accept her “flaws” and sing with love and courage in order to save humanity from the demons. Her bravery inspires others, and all her followers join together, and ultimately destroy the demons. Rumi’s journey was written to mirror the process of revealing one’s true self, letting go of shame and accepting oneself even our so called flaws, and see the beauty both within and without. In her final song, “What It Sounds Like”, she sings the words “`I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back. But now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass. The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony. My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like.”
The success of this movie seems to be in the universal understanding that like the Japanese art of Kintsugi, our so called “flaws” tell the story of our uniqueness and beauty and are created by our life experiences. WE need not hide or feel shame. We are beautiful.
I see that just like in life itself there are stages to our vessels, we are created, we are born, we grow and live through a variety of experiences that shape us, some for good, some painful, some lead to our ultimate death. Even in our times of brokenness we can heal and be made whole, not the same ever again but still able to live fully, purposefully even though we may carry the marks or scars of our lives. The Psalmist once again reinforces this hope: If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
The potter described in Jeremiah speaks to us all as vessels of the creator, formed and held in love and hope: each of us a vessel of God’s design. The good news of Jeremiah and the Good news for us today is not that the clay is perfect. It is that the clay is held. Held firmly. Held tenderly. Held by hands that do not let go. So let us trust the Potter. Let us stay soft, willing, ready to be reshaped. And let us remember: the cracks we carry do not disqualify us. As Leonard Cohen wrote it is the cracks where the light breaks in. They are our perfect imperfections. And they are held in the loving hands of the Potter who created us. Despite our flaws, there is always hope for beauty and goodness to be revealed when we trust God to shape us and our lives. Amen.