8-12 Still, God, you are our Father.

We’re the clay and you’re our potter:

All of us are what you made us.

Don’t be too angry with us, O God.

Don’t keep a permanent account of wrongdoing.

Keep in mind, please, we are your people—all of us.

Your holy cities are all ghost towns:

Zion’s a ghost town,

Jerusalem’s a field of weeds.

Our holy and beautiful Temple,

which our ancestors filled with your praises,

Was burned down by fire,

all our lovely parks and gardens in ruins.

In the face of all this,

are you going to sit there unmoved, God?

Aren’t you going to say something?

Haven’t you made us miserable long enough?

1,2 God told Jeremiah, "Up on your feet! Go to the potter’s house. When you get there, I’ll tell you what I have to say."

3,4 So I went to the potter’s house, and sure enough, the potter was there, working away at his wheel. Whenever the pot the potter was working on turned out badly, as sometimes happens when you are working with clay, the potter would simply start over and use the same clay to make another pot.

5-10 Then God’s Message came to me: "Can’t I do just as this potter does, people of Israel?" God’s Decree! "Watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you, people of Israel. At any moment I may decide to pull up a people or a country by the roots and get rid of them. But if they repent of their wicked lives, I will think twice and start over with them. At another time I might decide to plant a people or country, but if they don’t cooperate and won’t listen to me, I will think again and give up on the plans I had for them.

20-33 Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, "Why did you shape me like this?" Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right? Either or both happens to Jews, but it also happens to the other people. Hosea put it well:

I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies;

I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved.

In the place where they yelled out, "You’re nobody!"

they’re calling you "God’s living children."

Isaiah maintained this same emphasis:

If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered

and the sum labeled "chosen of God,"

They’d be numbers still, not names;

salvation comes by personal selection.

God doesn’t count us; he calls us by name.

Arithmetic is not his focus.

Isaiah had looked ahead and spoken the truth:

If our powerful God

had not provided us a legacy of living children,

We would have ended up like ghost towns,

like Sodom and Gomorrah.

How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their "God projects" that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling. Isaiah (again!) gives us the metaphor for pulling this together:

Careful! I’ve put a huge stone on the road to Mount Zion,

a stone you can’t get around.

But the stone is me! If you’re looking for me,

you’ll find me on the way, not in the way.

8-10 "Open up, heavens, and rain.

Clouds, pour out buckets of my goodness!

Loosen up, earth, and bloom salvation;

sprout right living.

I, God, generate all this.

But doom to you who fight your Maker—

you’re a pot at odds with the potter!

Does clay talk back to the potter:

‘What are you doing? What clumsy fingers!’

Would a sperm say to a father,

‘Who gave you permission to use me to make a baby?’

Or a fetus to a mother,

‘Why have you cooped me up in this belly?’"

15,16 Doom to you! You pretend to have the inside track.

You shut God out and work behind the scenes,

Plotting the future as if you knew everything,

acting mysterious, never showing your hand.

You have everything backward!

You treat the potter as a lump of clay.

Does a book say to its author,

"He didn’t write a word of me"?

Does a meal say to the woman who cooked it,

"She had nothing to do with this"?

20,21 In a well-furnished kitchen there are not only crystal goblets and silver platters, but waste cans and compost buckets—some containers used to serve fine meals, others to take out the garbage. Become the kind of container God can use to present any and every kind of gift to his guests for their blessing.

7-12 If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!

2 And the people of Zion, once prized,

far surpassing their weight in gold,

Are now treated like cheap pottery,

like everyday pots and bowls mass-produced by a potter.

8-12 "You made me like a handcrafted piece of pottery—

and now are you going to smash me to pieces?

Don’t you remember how beautifully you worked my clay?

Will you reduce me now to a mud pie?

Oh, that marvel of conception as you stirred together

semen and ovum—

What a miracle of skin and bone,

muscle and brain!

You gave me life itself, and incredible love.

You watched and guarded every breath I took.

23 Smooth talk from an evil heart

is like glaze on cracked pottery.

34-38 Wail, shepherds! Cry out for help!

Grovel in the dirt, you masters of flocks!

Time’s up—you’re slated for the slaughterhouse,

like a choice ram with its throat cut.

There’s no way out for the rulers,

no escape for those shepherds.

Hear that? Rulers crying for help,

shepherds of the flock wailing!

God is about to ravage their fine pastures.

The peaceful sheepfolds will be silent with death,

silenced by God’s deadly anger.

God will come out into the open

like a lion leaping from its cover,

And the country will be torn to pieces,

ripped and ravaged by his anger.