It is creative and intuitive. It is intimate and personal. It is an evolving, emerging process. It is the art of pottery. If you have ever watched a potter work with the clay on a wheel, you know how amazing the process can be. If you have ever tried it yourself, you know how difficult the process can be. Clay with just the right amount of moisture is thrown onto the center of a flat spinning wheel, where it is worked with the hands until it is smoothed and shaped into a bowl or cup or pot or vase. Watching the process leaves me with almost a sense of magic. It is almost as if the potter is pulling this marvelous, beautiful shape out of a lump of clay. It rises up or spreads out seemingly of its own accord. But, in fact, the entire process is guided and directed by the skill and vision of the potter. What emerges out of the formless lump of clay is the potter's design.

All in all, not a bad image for understanding the relationship between God and God's people. More than 2,500 years ago, the prophet Jeremiah found it to be a powerful way of conveying his message and even down to today it remains an image which speaks to us. God as our creator molds and shapes our very existence, not only physically but also spiritually, emotionally and even socially and culturally. And we are never beyond God's redeeming power to re-mold and re-shape when things have gone wrong. But at one point this potter/clay image breaks down. We are unlike clay in that we have a say in whether or not we will cooperate with the molding and shaping of the potter. We get to decide whether or not to yield to the potter's design. And frequently our decisions leave much to be desired. The image would be rather comical, if it weren't so tragic. We become like clay on a wheel, trying to shape ourselves. The wheel is spinning and we try to push this edge out just a little bit and push up that piece just so. The results are often rather lopsided, unbalanced and less than fully functional. Sometimes our lives get stretched so thin that we just collapse back in on ourselves and sometimes we become so off-centered that we get flung off the wheel entirely. And all because we are too proud or too afraid or too stubborn to allow ourselves to be shaped and molded by someone beyond ourselves.

But it doesn't have to be that way. When we can begin to trust in the wisdom and the beauty of the potter's design, then a new reality begins to emerge. A wonderful illustration of this is found in the tiny little book of Philemon. It is so short that it doesn't even have chapters. There are just 25 verses in the whole book. But in this brief letter from Paul we find the story of reality being reshaped by the hand of the divine potter.

Paul is writing to a man named Philemon, a member of the church in the city of Colossae. The subject of the letter is Onesimus, a slave who had run away from Philemon and eventually found his way to Paul while he was a prisoner in Ephesus. Under Paul's care and guidance, Onesimus had become a Christian and a helper to Paul. But now Paul is sending him back to face his master, Philemon. In those days such a prospect would have been a frightening and dangerous proposition. A runaway slave could be severely punished or even put to death. But Paul and Onesimus were trusting in the power of God to reshape the reality of their world. Onesimus is returning to Philemon not as a runaway slave but as a fellow member of the Christian community of faith, a brother in Christ. Paul speaks of the difference which God has made when he writes, "Formerly Onesimus was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me." (Philemon 11) That sentiment is really at the heart of our faith -- God can and does transform our lives and our world from useless lumps of clay into useful pieces of pottery.

But the story doesn't end with Onesimus' return. Years later, the Church in Ephesus became the center of an effort to gather and collect the letters which Paul had written to various churches and individuals. This collection formed the core of what we now know as the New Testament. And the bishop responsible for the Ephesian church during that time was a man named Onesimus. There is no direct evidence that the bishop and the slave were the same person, but I choose to believe it is true, because I choose to believe in the power of God to reshape our lives in dynamic and dramatic ways, if we will only yield ourselves to the design of the potter. It just sounds like something God would do. How is God seeking to mold your life?