The Potter’s Hands

Cover Article

by Michael Jones · Week of May 3, 2026

There is a street in Jerusalem’s Old City where you can still watch a potter work. He takes a lump of clay, shapeless, dull, unremarkable, and with steady hands turns it into a vessel of beauty and purpose. What strikes you is not the clay. It is the patience of the potter. He does not rush. He does not abandon a piece when it wobbles off center. He presses, he smooths, he starts again if he must. God told Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house, and when Jeremiah arrived, the vessel the potter was making was “spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do” (Jeremiah 18:4). Then the Lord spoke: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done?… Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand” (Jeremiah 18:6). That image is not a threat. It is a love letter. The God of heaven is not finished with you.

Most of us carry an unspoken fear that God sees us the way we see ourselves on our worst days—cracked, lopsided, not worth the trouble. But Scripture tells a different story. Paul writes, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The Greek word translated “workmanship” is poiema—the word from which we get “poem.” You are not an accident on the wheel. You are a work of art in progress. When you were buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4), you placed yourself on the potter’s wheel. You said, in effect, “Shape me.” And God took you at your word. He has been shaping you ever since—through every trial, every tear, every sleepless night. “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). The Potter does not abandon his project.

But here is the part we would rather skip: the shaping hurts. Clay does not become a vessel by sitting on a shelf. It is pressed, stretched, and sometimes collapsed back into a lump so the potter can begin again. James writes, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4). The pressure is not punishment. It is formation. The Hebrew writer says God disciplines those he loves, “that we may share his holiness,” and though discipline seems painful, “later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:10–11). The clay cannot see the finished shape; it only feels the pressure. But the potter sees the completed vessel the whole time. God sees what you are becoming even when you cannot.

And what is the shape God is pressing you toward? Paul names it plainly: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). Christlikeness. That is the vessel on the wheel. Every act of worship—every hymn you raise to God with the melody of your heart (Ephesians 5:19), every Lord’s Day you gather to break bread in remembrance of him (Acts 20:7), every prayer you lift from a surrendered spirit—is the potter’s hand turning the wheel. Every time you open your Bible and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly (Colossians 3:16), you yield to the pressure that is making you more like Jesus. And you are not on the wheel alone. The church is the potter’s workshop. We are “members one of another” (Romans 12:5), shaped side by side. “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together” (Hebrews 10:24–25). So if you feel pressed today—if life is squeezing and stretching and you cannot see the purpose—remember the potter’s house. The hands that hold you are not clumsy. They are nail-scarred, and they know exactly what they are doing. “But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8). Let him shape you. The vessel he has in mind is more beautiful than anything you could form on your own.

Other congregations are welcome to reprint this. It may be reproduced in another congregation’s bulletin or newsletter without asking permission. An acknowledgement of Orange View Church of Christ is appreciated but not required.

Bible Questions & Answers

Why do churches of Christ take the Lord’s Supper every Sunday?

The practice of observing the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week is one of the most distinctive features of churches of Christ, and it rests on careful attention to both the New Testament text and the pattern of the earliest Christians. Understanding why we do this requires us to trace what the Scriptures teach, how the apostolic church practiced communion, and what the observance means for believers today.

The starting point is the night Jesus instituted the meal. During the Passover, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Likewise the cup: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24–25). The phrase “do this” is a present active imperative in Greek—a command indicating ongoing, repeated action, not a one-time event. Jesus was establishing an ordinance for his church to observe continually. Paul reinforces this: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). The Supper is a proclamation, a sermon without words, declaring the death of Christ every time the church gathers around his table.

But how often is “as often”? A key passage often referenced is Acts 20:7: “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them.” Luke’s language here is significant. The definite construction—“the first day of the week”—tends to point to a regular, established practice, not an isolated occasion. The purpose clause is equally telling: they gathered “to break bread.” The infinitive of purpose indicates this was the reason for their assembly. Breaking bread was not incidental to their meeting; it was the central act around which the gathering was organized. This mirrors the pattern we see in Acts 2:42, where the earliest Jerusalem church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” The breaking of bread stands alongside other staples of Christian worship as a regular, defining practice of the church.

The reasoning follows the same hermeneutical principle we apply elsewhere in Scripture. When God told Israel to “remember the Sabbath day” (Exodus 20:8), no one understood that to mean once a month or once a quarter. The Sabbath came every seventh day, and the command applied each time it arrived. In the same way, the first day of the week comes every seven days. If the church gathered on the first day of the week to break bread, and Acts 20:7 tells us they did, then interpreting the phrase “the first day of the week” in the same manner as “the Sabbath day” is very reasonable.

It is also worth taking a look what the early Christian writers said on the subject. They are persuasive, but they are not authoritative because they were not inspired writers. Even so, the early church fathers confirm this pattern. The Didache, written near the end of the first century, instructs Christians: “On the Lord’s Day, come together, break bread, and give thanks.” Justin Martyr, writing around AD 150, describes the Sunday assembly and states that bread and wine over which thanks have been given are distributed to all who are present. The weekly practice was not an invention of later centuries; it was the inheritance of the apostolic church.

But the frequency matters only because the meaning matters. Paul warns the Corinthians to examine themselves before partaking, “for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Corinthians 11:29). The Lord’s Supper is not a ritual to be endured; it is a sacred moment to be entered with reverence, gratitude, and self-examination. Each Sunday, the bread reminds us that his body was broken for us. The cup reminds us that the new covenant was sealed in his blood—the blood that cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). Every week, the table calls us to remember the cross, examine our hearts, and renew our commitment to the One who gave himself for us. It also draws us together as a body. Paul writes, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). The Supper is not merely vertical, i.e., between us and God, but horizontal, binding us to one another in the fellowship of Christ’s sacrifice. When we reduce its observance to quarterly or annual occasions, we lose the weekly rhythm of grace that the early church treasured. God gave us a table, set it every Lord’s Day, and invites us to sit down and remember. Let us never treat that invitation lightly. - MJ