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Read: Jeremiah 18:5-6
Listen: Jeremiah 18

Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. Jeremiah 18:6

As Jeremiah watches the potter work, something goes wrong. The clay is marred, yet the potter doesn’t discard the flawed clay. Instead, he presses it down and begins reshaping it into something new. God uses this moment to deliver a hope-filled message to Israel: you are marred, but I’m willing to make you new. Their sins—rejecting God, replacing him with idols, offering children as sacrifices, oppressing widows and orphans, stealing and killing—have left them broken and defective. Yet God’s hands remain ready to reshape them if they will return and surrender to him.

We can feel marred or broken, too. Our choices may have left scars and wounds, and it may feel like nothing good could come from our lives. Or maybe something happened to us that was completely out of our control. The beautiful, hope-filled words of this passage declare that God is still at work. He can take any failure, weakness or wound and reshape us into something new and beautiful. No one else has the power to make our lives beautiful, but he can. Through the power of Jesus, God is making our lives new. The phrase “as seemed best to him” reminds us to turn to God and trust him, even when we don’t yet understand what he’s doing.

TODAY: Journal about a part of your life that feels marred. Bring it honestly before God, and ask him to reshape you. Trust that he works with good purpose, even when you can’t yet see the result. Explore Jeremiah’s story further on the Beyond the Weekend Podcast—find it wherever you listen to podcasts or on YouTube.