The prophets and psalmists of the Bible employ the metaphors of the crucible and the potter to describe divine action in shaping human nature into His own image.
The image of the crucible (Proverbs 17.3 and 27.21) helps us acquire spiritual eyes endowed with a new power to see the cleansing and purifying presence of God in all the events, impulses, inspirations, and commandments that circumscribe our lives. Saint Gregory of Narek mourns, weeping bitterly, the callous resistance of our human nature to this divine purification, quoting these very same scriptural images. Gregory sees, according to some with temerity-in the crucible the renewal in the Spirit of Christ, a consummation of a union that gives birth to this new life through the grace of resurrection: “I do melt In the choice crucible of your solicitous love,”–prays the saint–“but never am purified, I do fuse to be amalgamated but never am united; you, my master builder heavenly silversmith work on me for naught, per the well known prophetic parable, and my wickedness did not melt away.” (Prayer 69.1)
The image of the potter, as the Prophet Isaiah (64.8) describes it–“Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand”–correctly reminds us of the story of the first creation of man, when God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1.26). Paul the Apostle sums up this renewal in his understanding of the mystery of predestination (Romans 8.28–30), when our clay nature will fully realize its capacity for communion with the grace of God through the power of the image of God impressed in us, which some say is our true spirit, our true identity. The solid rock of our personality, on which we are able to build a house that no storm or flood can destroy.
In the womb of faith at the baptismal font, we are truly cleansed and washed of all our human frailties, and we receive the communion of the divine reality. We have become children of the creator God. We receive the honor and confidence to call Him, to give Him His Name, our Father.
That holy Name is no longer hidden, nor are those who speak that Name to be punished by death. On the contrary, every time we call upon that holy Name, God fills us with His divine life. A Name perfumed like incense, beautiful like the dawn, a Name familiar and comely, a Name tasty and life-giving.
