by Sam Drew

"So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel.  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 18:3-4)

A few days ago a friend of mine shared a metaphor that really connected with me.  He spoke of moving from the hamster’s wheel to the Potter’s wheel. 

My daughter’s room is right next to ours, and she has a hamster named Brownie.  Before Brownie came into our lives I did not know, or really care, that Hamster’s were nocturnal.  Now I do.  Now I sleep through it, but, at first, every night I would wake up to this strange thrumming  -- rummm, rummmm, rummm.  Brownie was getting his exercise.  I guess he likes the sensation of progress without actually going anywhere.  And, often, we seem to as well.

We’re having the same argument again … This always happens when we are getting ready to go on holidays … We tell our children the same things over and over, yet they never seem to get it… Whenever I visit my mother, I always feel this way, it always happens this way.
 
Many of us resonate with these sentiments.  We see repeated patterns -- hamster wheels -- in our lives, yet we don’t know how to stop and get off.  But, do we really want to stop?  Part of the reason the wheel keeps going around and around is that we keep it going. We’re comfortable in our habits.  We want the other person to change, but we’re not willing to ourselves.  As damaging as some of these patterns are, at least we know them.  We’re afraid of what would happen if things changed.

It is God who calls us to get off the hamster wheels of our lives and truly, honestly love others and ourselves.  This often means changing parts of us that we hold tightly to.  Just thinking about the Potter reshaping and reforming my life -- who I am – can make me cringe.  It comes down to whether I’m willing to truly trust in his love for me and put myself in his hands for him to do “as seems best to him.”