Paul turned up at our house this evening with a potters wheel. It was fun getting it down into the cellar as it was very heavy.

This is part of the slowly unfolding project that Michaela and Pauline have of converting our cellar into a working pottery. I know nothing about using clay, but I have to say that I love the idea of something so basic being shaped into lovely things down there.

Particularly using this functional basic object that still somehow manages to be beautiful…

It was a lovely old wooden thing, with a treadle and fly wheel. The kind of thing that has been used to shape clay for thousands of years- certainly since the times of Jeremiah-

1This 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.” 3So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4But 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.

5Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6“O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

(Jeremiah 18 NIV)

We used to sing songs asking God to mould us like clay- shaping us into the perfect pot that he would have us be.

Now, I think that my prayer is more that God would still fill me up and use me, misshapen and rough as my pot surely remains.

May I be ugly, imperfect, but still useful.

Still formed out of the good old earth.