Clay in the hands of God

Where do you go to pray? Although our Columban seminary in Sydney had a church and chapels down in the crypt, I would often wander down into the bush to pray. This question about where do we go to pray came to mind as I pondered today’s first reading from Jeremiah 18:1-6 about how the Lord called the prophet Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house. Where we pray can have impact upon the images that speak to us in prayer. The Australian bush was a special place for me. Maybe there was something raw and rugged about the surroundings which brought me into the presence of God. For Jeremiah, it was to sit watching the potter at work which triggered an image of God as the potter and himself as the clay in the hands of God. Today we remember a remarkable saint, Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), who set out to be a lawyer and was very successful. After seven years in legal practice, he finally lost his first case and that prompted him to enter the seminary to become a priest. This experience of loosing a legal case appeared to have had a profound affect upon him and his relationship to God. He later went on to found the Redemptorists, a congregation dedicated to working among the poor and abandoned. So, where do you go to pray? Is it a place which arouses images that speak to you of your relationship to God and your sense of being called to witness to the gospel? It doesn’t have to be a church or a temple. It could be anywhere because God can speak to us even in the most unlikely of places, like a potter’s house, a court of law or just out in the bush.

 

Tom Rouse