God's Way of Communicating

In today’s first reading, Jeremiah 18: 1-6, the Lord says to Jeremiah: “Rise up, be off to the potter’s house; there I will give you my message.  I went down to the potter’s house,” Jeremiah says.  How often do you and I listen to the Lord in the way that Jeremiah did! Or would we retort God, saying: “What? Go down to the potter’s house? What am I to do there? I’m no potter. I am not interested.” And then we go our own way! Not Jeremiah. God could not have been clearer. “Rise up, be off to the potter’s house.”  But wait a minute. Also think of the times when you did rise up and go to check on your child, your spouse, your friend;  and, luckily, you did because he/she was in danger, was ill, distressed and desperately needed help. Or your loved one was about to do something that would have been harmful to him/her.  I think of the woman who went down to the area where people were rioting against the police in Ferguson, MO, and found her son throwing rocks at police. She grabbed him and sent him home, screaming: “This is not what I taught you. “

Jeremiah finds the potter redoing the pottery he/she was trying to create because it had turned out badly. So the potter reshapes the clay until it turns out to be a masterpiece. That is what God does for us over and over and over again. That is what parents and teachers do every day as they work with their children/students to become their best selves, to become the woman/the man they know God wants of those entrusted to their care!  And we accomplish God’s work of art because, in the words of Psalm 67, God shows kindness and blesses us; God makes his face shine on us.