Scooping up Clay
There is a futuristic story about God granting a meeting to a team of scientists who had made such advances in biology and related fields that they were indeed proud and confident. They even suggested to the Creator that perhaps humans would eventually turn the corner and not need so much help from God. God said, “Really? Do you think you could make a human being from the dust of the ground, like I did, early on? The team thought and answered, “Given the right organic material within the soil, perhaps we could?” Reaching down to get some dirt for the challenge they asked, “Would you like us to show, you?” To this God said, “Hang on there; that batch is my work. Y’all get your own dirt.”
Humility always looks better on a human than hubris. Look at two passages from the Scriptures and find encouragement toward a sound approach to the creative power of God. Psalm 139 is the prayer of a worshiper blown away by the grandeur and power of God. The eternal, omniscient, and omnipresent qualities of God throw the psalmist into a state of awe. He recognizes that God knows him altogether: his every word and thought, when he sits, stands, or journeys about. He acknowledges that but for the creative energy of God, he would not have come into being at all:
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:12-15)
Another gorgeous allusion to creation comes in the prophet’s metaphor of God, fashioning Israel at the potter’s wheel. The great Potter wants a people formed to serve God. The ominous nature of this prophecy of Jeremiah comes in the suggestion that God can, as a potter at the wheel, stay with the vessel at hand or go in a completely different direction. The house of Israel can be left out of the picture to accomplish God’s desired purposes:
Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. (Jeremiah 18:6-8)
The scholarship I enjoy consulting is that of Robert Alter in his translation and commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures. He points out several strands of connection between the fashioning of the human in the Genesis account of creation, and Jeremiah’s word on fashioning of a servant nation out of clay. The ominous message is that the servant has a responsibility to be a vessel fit for the Potter. God wonderfully creates us and wonderfully shapes us for divine service. It is humbling to remember that God has a choice about counting on us or moving ahead in another way.
Hands-On Creativity
Scoop up that clay, Holy One
scoop up that clay
breathe into the form you have shaped
Turn that wheel, O Potter,
turn that wheel
shape a vessel you trust for your work
Extract our delusion, Creator
slice out our pride
reveal that our being stems from you
Fire us, Kiln-keeper
fire us good
purify: harden our substance and glaze
O Helper, steady our wobbly selves,
dizzy from whirling formation
turn spinning clay into vessels true
—David Price, 1 September 2022