Team Tuohy

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Our goal every week is to write about a verse that is changing our life as we memorize it with the context and meaning into our hearts. I will admit I have been "scripture crazy" recently- I just cannot get enough of His truth and all He promises to and for us. For week one I wanted to do one that is so dear to my heart.

“Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand" Jeremiah 18:6 (NIV)

In Context:
 ¹ This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ² “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” ³ So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. ⁴ 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.  ⁵ Then the word of the LORD came to me. ⁶ He said, “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. ⁷ If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, ⁸ and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned" Jeremiah 18:1-8

The potter was making a pot but he discovered a flaw. Possibly the potter allowed his hand to slip, knocking the pot off center on the wheel. At any rate, the pot was damaged. When a pot has been damaged, the potter does not throw away the clay,  the potter remakes the pot into another vessel.God said that just as the potter can use the damaged clay, He can make something beautiful from the ruins of our lives. (Commentary from C. Littlefield & J. Mallory).

How wonderful that our Lord knows we may slip and be damaged from His perfect plan due to our own sin or our life circumstances, but that does not mean He leaves us. Instead, He simply reshapes us into a new perfect plan in His wonderful and caring hands. He never lets us go.

I use to wonder what it looked like to God, our lives, how did He know all we were going to do with free will/live through - even the bad- and still have this perfect plan. It is because He is sovereign and constantly making something new and beautiful out of slime and mess. I often find it helps to put my name in versus such as these when I am in those quite and weak moments as it tends to sink deeper, "Like clay in the hand of the potter; so are you in my hand,_____________" mmm just the thought of being in his hand warms my soul and comforts me.What a truth that can free us from shame and inadequacy, from feeling as if we are not ever going to be good enough again. That is a lie and the truth to that is God is always using our story for it is His story, He does not allow those to end without some form of good. We don't need a Sunday afternoon, or a birthday or a New Years Eve to have a clean slate. He is already on it, wiping that flaw smooth and creating His masterpiece that is even better now than it was before.