Shaped Again
Jeremiah 18:4 · Philippians 1:6 (NIV)
Archaeologists working off the coast of Turkey believe they have found what may be the oldest known shipwreck in the world.
The team estimates that the ship sank between 4,400 and 4,700 years ago, CBS News reported on October 14. The wreck that held the record before, near Greece, is about 4,200 years old. Hakan Öniz, an associate professor at Akdeniz University in Turkey, oversaw the expedition. He told the BBC, "The shipwreck is a time capsule at the bottom of the sea."
In her own account, archaeologist Karin Sowada cautions that the dating is tentative and further analysis is needed.
The wooden ship itself did not survive. Three stone anchors remained, along with 30 clay storage jars. The archaeologists say the vessel was a trade ship nearly 33 feet long. Some of the jars still hold residue, and they appear to have carried olive oil or wine. Early analysis suggests that some jars, or the clay used to make them, may have come from the Jordan Valley. Karin Sowada of Macquarie University in Australia examined the jars after they were brought up. At first, Öniz thought the jars were only a century or two old. Then the team compared them with jars found in Egypt.
Potters shaped those jars by hand more than four thousand years ago. The wood is gone. The clay survived.
Jeremiah was a prophet who spoke for GOD to the people of Judah in the years before Babylon conquered Jerusalem. One day GOD sent him to a potter's house. "So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel" (Jeremiah 18:3). "But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him" (Jeremiah 18:4).
The pot went wrong in the potter's hands, and he shaped the same clay into another pot.
Then GOD spoke to Jeremiah about HIS people. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel" (Jeremiah 18:6).
The passage also calls the people to turn from evil. GOD speaks about nations responding to HIS warning and changing their ways (Jeremiah 18:7-11). Being in HIS hands asks something of us too: a willingness to be changed.
King David knew what it was to be held in GOD's hand. David was the shepherd who became king of Israel and wrote many of the psalms. Psalm 63 comes from a time "when he was in the Desert of Judah." It opens with thirst. "You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). He sings through the hard season: "Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings" (Psalm 63:7). Then he writes, "I cling to you; your right hand upholds me" (Psalm 63:8).
David clings, and GOD's right hand holds him up.
GOD did more than shape people from the outside. A bishop named Irenaeus led the church in Lyon, in what is now France, around AD 180. In Against Heresies III.19.1, he wrote about why the Son of GOD became human. "For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man," he wrote, "that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God" (Against Heresies III.19.1).
In CHRIST, GOD took on human flesh. The Son of GOD became a man so that people could be adopted as children of GOD. Our place in GOD's family is a gift of grace.
The apostle Paul, who planted churches across the Roman world, wrote a letter to the church in Philippi, a city in Greece. He opened it with confidence in GOD's continuing work in them. "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6).
The work begins with GOD, and HE carries it to completion.
No one knows the names of the potters who shaped those jars. Their work outlasted them by four thousand years. The people of GOD rest in the hand of a Potter who never leaves the wheel.
It does leave me thinking about the parts of my life that went wrong in the middle of the shaping.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
🙏 To the one who feels marred, the Potter is still shaping the same clay.
🙏 To the one in a dry and weary season, GOD's right hand holds you up.
🙏 To the one who feels unfinished, HE who began the work will carry it to completion.
🙏 To the one who feels fragile, you are clay in the hand of the One who made you.
Grace and Peace.