Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Of Potters, Bread, and the Spirit

Jim:
Jeremiah 18:1-11 and John 6:27-40
The passages from Jeremiah 18 and John 8 each offer wonderful images that help us to understand God’s love—and justice––in our world and in our lives. Jeremiah identifies God as the potter and us as the clay. If we choose evil it is within God’s power to start over again and to reshape and reform us as elements of God’s creation. In John 6:35 Jesus identifies himself as the bread of life. Those who come to Jesus will neither hunger nor thirst. They will be filled.

Romans 8:1-11
In Romans 8:6, Paul sums things up for us this way, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” In other words, if we set our minds on the images of potter/clay and bread of life, and if we live with those images ever before us, those or any of the hundreds of other images, or metaphors, or examples that scripture offers us of God loving and caring for God's people, we are more closely attuned to what God is doing in our lives and in our world, we are drawing closer to the life and peace that God offers so freely. But to allow the images that the world provides, the pictures and ideas that are pumped at us every day, is to set our minds on flesh and to align ourselves with death.

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