The book of Jeremiah (18:1-11) speaks of God as a potter at work in the potter’s house – a place where clay is shaped by hands on spinning wheals. One after another, the potter shapes vessels of all shapes and sizes – some large, some small, some created for beauty, some for function.

To call God “the potter” is to imagine the ways that God is forming you into a vessel and giving you shape and determining your function. There’s an intimacy to thinking of the ways that God is molding and making you, and everyone around you. For the prophet Jeremiah, it wasn’t only individuals who were being shaped, it was the entire community. In the potter’s house the entire community is clay in the potters hands. We are the ones God is making and remaking.

YOU MATTER, our theme for this month, is a way of saying that God, the potter, forms you and shapes you and knows you and cares about you. In worship, we – as individuals and as a community – are being shaped into the person and the people that God calls us to be. It happens when we confess the ways that we continually turn from God and try to strike out on our own and receive God’s word of forgiveness. It happens when a word, or hymn, or prayer speaks the words of encouragement or hope that we need to hear. It happens when we receive bread and wine and the mercy offered in them. It happens when we see the pain of the people around us and allow ourselves to be impacted by them. It happens we hear the cries for mercy and justice of the world around us and we discern new ways of being church in this place and time. To call God the potter means we see ourselves as clay and recognize that we are continually being shaped through Word, Water, and Meal in the context of community.

YOU MATTER. You matter individually. You matter collectively. Your presence matters. Your prayers matter. Your voice matters. Your laments matter. Your challenges matter. Your dreams matter. Your contributions matter. Your gifts matter. YOU MATTER to the community of faith where you worship. But even more importantly, YOU MATTER to God who treasures you!