The Potter
“But now, O LORD, thou art our
father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy
hand.” [1]
In His wisdom, Heavenly Father
often teaches his children through stories and examples to make principles
easier to understand. Because of my
personal interest in pottery, I like the stories of the potters that are found
in the scriptures and the concepts and principles they teach.
I have always believed in the
principal of repentance but still had some questions about the process that I
had been unable to resolve.
Repentance and the Remade Pot
During this mortal existence Heavenly
Father’s plan allows us to repent when we sin. Isaiah illustrates, “Come now,
and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be
as wool.”[2] I
have always believed this principle. I have wondered how it is that no trace of
sin can be left. If, for example, you have two white cloths, and one gets soiled. It can be washed and it can be made clean,
but I still know that one cloth has had to be cleaned and the other had never
been dirty. This story of Jeremiah has helped me gain understanding, where I
had been unable to before.
As a young man in high school I
signed up to take a pottery class. I immediately took a liking to working with
clay. Now, later in life, I still enjoy working with clay. Often, when I throw
a pot, there will be a flaw that shows up. It will cause the pot to be uneven,
to wobble or otherwise misshapen. While I am not a perfectionist, I really want
the work that I do to be as good as I can make it. Sometimes, the flaw gets worked out as part
of the process. There are other times when
it is not so easily fixed. When this is
the case, I simply collapse the wet pot, dry out the clay a little, and start
again. It doesn’t matter how bad the
first pot was, the second can be made perfect.
Every time I make a mistake, I can do the process all over again.
Jeremiah observed the potter in
the process of working the clay, pushing it around on the wheel and creating a
pot. When the potter created a work that
was flawed, he removed it and made another.
The Lord taught Jeremiah that we
are like the clay. We are flawed and often make mistakes. Heavenly Father has
given us the principal of repentance. This process can help us start
again. Just like the potter’s clay, we
can be brought back to the start and be remade. It is the miracle of the
redemption that provides us the opportunity to repent and thus return to live
with God. Where “...no unclean thing can
dwell with God.”[4] Like the remade pot, we can be perfect with no
sign of the previous flaw. It is as the
sin had never existed. And so we see that repentance is not like the example of
a cloth that has been washed, it is like the pot that has been remade.
How does Heavenly Father feel
about this “remade pot”? He would feel
the same as I do about my remade pots. I don’t think about the mistakes. I
don’t even remember the many times I have had to remake the pots. I relish the finished pieces and lovingly
think about the joy they bring to me. Heavenly Father does not remember our
errors, but lovingly views us, remade, without flaw.
God continues to use the pot as
he asks Jeremiah to illustrate the consequences of non-repentance. The Lord
asks Jeremiah to go to the tribe of Judah and preach repentance, he tells Jeremiah
to take a potter’s clay bottle. Then, to
make his point, he is to break the bottle in front of the people and give them a
message. “Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with
thee, And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Even so will I
break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot
be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place
to bury.”[5]
James E. Foust said, referring to
Jeremiah, “He was a prophet who saw some of the darkest days of Israel’s
wickedness, yet through it all he recognized the skilled hands of the Master
potter, molding his character into a beautiful work of art. The events of his
life remind us of the necessity to submit our whole lives, no matter how
difficult it may be, into the Lord’s loving hands.”.[i]
“Our
lives may also be vessels of honor, works of beauty in the hands of the Master
potter, if we will respond to His call, be pliable in His hands, and learn from
the things which we suffer.” [ii]If we can put ourselves in God’s hands, like clay to the potter he will make of us a great work. We must repent daily realizing that Christ’s redemption allows us to be remade, perfect and whole. Then, as we go through the trials and fires of life, and continue to endure, we can ultimately return and live with the Father, the Master Potter.
[1] Old
Testament, Isaiah 64:8
[2] Old
Testament, Isaiah 1:18
[3] Old
Testament, Jeremiah 18:1-6
[4] Book of
Mormon, 1 Nephi 10:21
[5] Old
Testament, Jeremiah 19:10,11
[i] Ensign,
June 1998, A Second Birth, President James E. Faust
[ii] History
of the Church, 4:478, as quoted by Elder Jean A. Tefan