“God and I are in Process, He Acts and I Become”

Meister Eckhart

Each of us has so much about us that God wants to use.  God wants to shape us for His glory and honor.  So often we see in ourselves, not enough, or we fear stepping into the future forgetting that God has called and destined us for His glory.   Once we become open to God’s power in our lives and His ability to form us as the potter does, shaping us into His instrument, although we struggle, our heart and our passion becomes the Lord’s.   So no matter as Jeremiah says,  “I’ve been duped and I let my self be duped”.   We still allow the Lord to mold us to shape us and to use us.

The scriptures remind us most clearly that “God is God, and we are not” fr. stephan brown, svd.   All though this may seem simple so often we somehow believe in our own arrogance and pride that we speak and act for God based upon some poorly guided misunderstanding of God’s word and its meaning for us today.   Peter get’s it right, but at the next moment he doesn’t know what it means.   He is right that Jesus is the Christ, He is the Son of God, one co-equal in essence to the Father.   To see Jesus is to see the Father for Jesus and the Father, God are one.

Peter, and the other disciples had their minds all made up as to who Jesus was and what Jesus was here to do.   As the Promised One, as the Messiah, the Son of God they believed that Jesus would restore the old Kingdom of Israel.  He would rid them of Roman rule and reestablish the monarchy.   The whole idea, of going to Jerusalem and suffering, dying and whatever that rising stuff is about was not in their plans for Jesus.  They had decided that they knew why Jesus had come and were expecting him to eventually bring forth His great army of heavenly hosts to fight the battle.  Peter failed to realize that “God is God and We are not”.

Jesus became a human being, took on our nature for one specific purpose.  To fulfill God’s promise of salvation for the world.  To provide a savior for not only the people of Israel but for all people.  God sent his “Only begotten Son into the World so that the World might be saved through Him.   Jerusalem and Calvary were Jesus’ destination, it is the direction His entire ministry had been moving.   To prevent that or deny it as Peter would have it, would be to interrupt and negate God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ.    It’s Ok, go ahead and Say AMEN.

Jesus reminds us that like Him, we too must take up our cross, must deny ourselves, what we want, what we desire, and allow ourselves to be placed in the potters hands.  With our hardships, our despair, our struggles and pain God desires to use us.  But we must go down to the Potters house.

Jeremiah 18:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4 And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

In the potters house we hear the word of the Lord.  Just as he works at the wheel to shape and mold the clay, and even if spoiled he puts it back on the table and works it more.   This is the renewal, the reshaping and the reforming of our minds.   This way we become a vessel for the Lord.   Taking up our Cross and following Jesus is the being molded by the potter, your struggle, your addiction, your attitude, your grief, your hardship, you battle with your own demons all of this the Potter can use to reshape you to be the vessel he will use you to glorify God with your life.

Welcome to the Potters House.  All are welcome, all are valued all are wanted in the Potter’s House

Fr. Stephan Brown, SVD