A Spinning Kind of Love

This is from Dr. Jody Seymour's blog. Jody recently retired from Davidson United Methodist Church as Senior Minister. Be sure to read the poem at the end.

A Spinning Kind of Love

Yesterday I stood before a group of people, most in wheelchairs, who looked to me to give them some words of hope.  It was what is called "an assisted living" community.  The words say it all for these dear people need assistance just to keep on living.  I sensed that many of them felt "used up."

What words could I offer them?  So I remembered those words that came to a restless prophet named Jeremiah.  He balked at God's call to him.  He claimed that not only was he too young but that he was not good on his feet and had little to say.  God already had his number and would not let him out of the choke hold that was placed on  the young Jeremiah's soul.

The book named after him contains a whole series of complaints and attempts to get out of the job.  Jeremiah ended up in the pits, literally.  His conspirators, and yes they were real not imagined, threw him into a dry cistern and left him to die.  Fortunately Jeremiah did have a few friends left and they tied together some rags and pulled him up by his arm "pits."

Needless to say Jeremiah was still in the dumps about the long term success of his mission.  "What's the use.  The cause is hopeless and the people you long to have me save for you are not worth it.  The whole situation is 'spoiled.'"

So God sends Jeremiah down to the potter's house.  "What's the point of going to a potters house," thought the tired prophet, but sometimes you just have to do what the boss says.  So he goes.

It was the words that God spoke to Jeremiah that came to me as I stood before a group of souls and bodies that perhaps felt "spoiled."  I told them about how hard it was to "throw" a pot onto a potter's wheel.  The unskilled person like myself could not get the clay centered.  I know this because I had to throw a pot in order to pass a class in college.  How many times had I failed, only to have to turn off the wheel and start over.

A skilled potter can actually reshape the clay and not turn off the wheel.  Jeremiah discovered this as he watched the potter reshape the clay that seemed spoiled on the wheel.  Then came the words that Jeremiah and those assisted living people needed to hear; "You are like the clay in my hands," says God the potter.  "I never give up and you are my clay.  You may feel spoiled but I can and will reshape you.  I am the potter you are the clay."

I told those dear people that one day the spinning would stop and only then will we benefit from a final reshaping but it will happen because the potter never gives up.  After I came home I wrote a poem to sum it  all up:

A Spinning Kind of Love
  (based on Jeremiah 18: 1-4)

Spoiled I thought it was
  the clay so without
  a kind of form

What shape could come from
  a motion that
  seemed so random?

And then the potter entered
  and hands were
  gently placed

I could feel the movement
  of love that wanted
  more of me

So I am not of my
  own making for
  clay is a gift

Never spoiled though it
  may see that
  way to me

But the potter never ceases
  to create from what seems
  to be so incomplete

And one day the spinning
  will stop and only
  then will I know...

Know that from the beginning
  a shape would come
  because of creating
    hands of love