Reflection
We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Isaiah 64:8
Somewhere in our subconscious, we carry an idea of what our perfect self ought to be. God doesn’t demand that we be that idealized self. The potter knows the clay. Some of the most beautiful pots come from clay which may be considered imperfect. It may have iron or some other mineral in it and this gives it color. It may have sand in it and this gives it texture. The potter knows the clay and chooses it. The pot is the projection of the potter. It is the integration of the vision, feelings and care of the potter who from that fashions a beautiful pot. The pot is what it is. It doesn’t question and ask, “Why did you make me this way?” It pours milk, holds soup, or displays flowers. The pot is true to the nature and purpose for which it was made. It is what it was meant to be.
Prayer
I am God’s work of art.
Action
Consider the fact that we are each a unique sign of God’s eternal love given to one another as gift. How would we live with that understanding? What would life be like?
Suggested Reading
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.
Jeremiah 18: 1-5
In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use.
2 Timothy:20-2
The Potter intervenes at the very heart of matter in order to give the clay another shape…this new shape is one constructed in the imagination. From the center of the Potter’s being comes forth a vision, a possibility….It is then fixed by the totality of her gestures into something permanent.
God operates in the same manner. God speaks a word and brings form out of the void. God is the cosmic center from which all reality derives its being. God is the potter who scoops the clay from the riverbank to shape a human person. God has a personal investment in creation that is akin to the potter’s involvement in the clay…Life is not a matter of change and random events. It bears the imprint of God’s own shaping and forming hands.
Thomas Hawkins
To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.
Thomas Merton
If you want to be original just try being yourself, because God has never made two people exactly alike.
Bernard Meltzer
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some people like you, some people don’t. In the end you just have to be yourself.
Andres Iniesta