Jeremiah: As Potter’s Clay
This page is our own summary. The original belongs to Church of Jesus Christ (Gospel Library); please read it there.
For this week’s Come, Follow Me reading, an Ensign article on what Jeremiah’s visit to the potter’s house teaches about letting the Lord reshape our lives.
This Ensign article from October 2002, "Jeremiah: As Potter's Clay," was written by Elder Jean A. Tefan, then an Area Authority Seventy. It is freely available in the Church's Gospel Library and fits this week's Come, Follow Me reading (Jeremiah 1–3; 7; 16–18; 20, October 19–25, 2026).
The lesson at the potter's house
Elder Tefan starts with Jeremiah 18, where the Lord sends Jeremiah to watch a potter. When the vessel on the wheel is flawed, the potter does not throw the clay away; he reshapes it into a new pot. The Lord then asks Israel whether He cannot do the same with them. Elder Tefan suggests the question applied to Jeremiah personally as well, and that it applies to each of us.
Known before he was born
He reviews Jeremiah's call in chapter 1: a young man from Anathoth who felt unable to speak, but whom the Lord had known and ordained before his birth. Elder Tefan connects this to the idea that the Lord knows each of us and places us where we can grow. He shares how his wife, who did not speak fluent English when they were called to preside over the Fiji Suva Mission, was blessed to learn it and teach missionaries in both English and French.
Pliable in the Lord's hands
The key quality he sees in Jeremiah is pliability: a willingness to bend to God's will, supported by humility, obedience and faith. He cites Jeremiah breaking a clay jar before the leaders, and wearing a yoke before the king, as examples of obeying even when it looked foolish or was dangerous. He also tells of a young man in New Caledonia who repented, served a mission and was later married in the temple.
Shaped by suffering
Elder Tefan notes the hardships Jeremiah endured, including being beaten and put in the stocks by Pashur (Jeremiah 20) and later being left in a muddy cistern until Ebed-melech rescued him. He teaches that patient endurance can be one of the Lord's tools for shaping us, quoting Elder Hugh W. Pinnock's reminder that "the potter did not give up and throw the clay away."
He closes by inviting readers to become vessels of honor by answering the Lord's call, staying pliable and learning from what they suffer.
How we wrote this: we read the source page linked above and summarized it in our own words, quoting at most a short line with attribution. We have not added facts from outside that source. If anything here differs from the original, the original is correct.