God the Divine Potter will reshape us

Jer. 18:1-6, Mt. 13:47-53. Today's first reading presents us with the symbolic actions of Jeremiah that announces the creative intention of God, the 'Divine Potter', to collapse the deformed clay back into its primitive form and start over again in forming the people of Israel. The image of God as the potter suggests that God can take what comes out wrong in our lives and reshape it into something good. We are creative work of art in progress. We must allow God to shape us and form us. If we do not turn out to be all that God has in mind for us, God is willing to patiently re-shape us and form us again. God may have begun a good work in us but God has yet to bring it to completion. Judgement belongs to God at the end of time and the just judge is also our Creator who is constantly at work to bring good out of evil and new life out of what has come out wrong.

In the same way, today's Gospel, we also find God’s merciful way of starting over again. Jesus suggests that life is like a storeroom full of new things as well as the old. Through this parable, Jesus wants us to know that we are welcome in His Church, the Church often being symbolised and represented as a boat and the fishes being all of us. God calls on us, whether big or small, good or bad, regardless of our background, character, ethnicity or origin, we are called and welcome in the Kingdom of God. God has given us many chances to change ourselves and turn towards Him once again with faith, rejecting all sorts of falsehoods and evil. The co-existence of good and evil reveals the loving mercy of God as He gives equal opportunities to us with the hope of inner conversion. Let us not wait until it is late for us to realise that we have spurned so much of His love and mercy, when we stand by the gates of hell from which there is no hope and escape any longer. Those who end up in hell are those who by their conscious choice, chose sin over good, wickedness and evil over righteousness and path of Satan over God’s path.

May the Lord shape and mould us in accordance with His will! Amen!! Remain safe, it is well with you!!!