When I was studying at Homerton

My Bible: reasons to believe in the power of the Bible

'When I was studying at Homerton, Cambridge, my good friend walked into my room one day, blew the dust off my Bible and said, “Why don’t you read your Bible?”

At the same time, I’d taken up pottery. I carried on doing it until I was 80. It was the most satisfying thing I ever did. I loved the feel of the clay in my hands and getting it central on the wheel. That’s essential. If you do that, you can do anything at all with the clay.

One day I was asked to give a Bible study and I read a passage from Jeremiah about God being the potter and us being the clay. It’s an amazing exposition of what it is like to be a potter and what happens if the pot goes wonky and you have to start again. That really spoke to me a lot.

That’s how God is. It’s no use working with hard clay because it will resist you. If the clay is too soft the pot goes sloppy. But in the hands of a master potter, if anything does go wrong, you can start again and the second time it will come exactly right. You have to be very patient, which I think God is.

Looking back over my life, not all that has happened has been good. But in all of it I could trust what I read in the Bible and I was sure that I could rely on that.’

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