Broken

A few years ago I came across a picture of a broken vase that was pieced back together with gold. That pictured impressed upon me the beauty that could still be found in something broken. I thought the vase became more beautiful and more priceless. It was transformed into a thing of value, instead of being discarded useless.

Several months ago, a friend shared critical turning points in his life where pains were definitely being experienced. I recalled the vase and explained the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer. The same could happen for our heartaches, and our healing.

We could relate to feeling broken and not being valued - by others as well as by ourselves. We have memories of a person or people whom took us for granted and broke our hearts to pieces. Or we have made personal decisions that were harming us or detrimental to us.

Sometimes we learn from those experiences immediately and walk away. If we were a vase, we get chipped or one big piece gets broken.

Sometimes we stay in those experiences, so we continue to get chipped, and break more pieces.

At certain points we wish to be better. Life must be better than what we were enduring and experiencing!?!

We try to put our pieces back together. With glue, or with sticky tape, or bag them up together to fix later.

Yet, moving forward our lives continue breaking - big and small, intentionally and unintentionally. We reason that is what life is.

How do we fix those brokenness?? Can we really live life without fixing them?

Do we use tape? Do we buy a new vase and hide our broken pieces behind it? Do we continue on broken without any fixing? We could use glue (earthly things and natural support). Glue does work well in piecing things together, sometimes hiding the cracks, but there would always be areas where a space cannot be covered. I also think glued items no longer look/feel as good; and are no longer as strong and durable as pre-breaking. Fragile.

God is my master potter. He created me in His perfect image. I managed to not value that and broke my pieces. God does not want us/humanity to live alone in our brokenness. It breaks Him too to see us that way. To see us, His creation, trying to fix ourselves without Him, with glue at best. So he sent us Jesus.

Jesus is our gold repair. In having a personal relationship with Him, old glue/tape gets removed and our broken pieces gets realigned together with His gold. He fills up broken cracks of our lives were pieces went missing. We see our worth because of His mercy and love flowing along our breaking.

We continue to break ourselves being only human. We go back to old glue (habits). Maybe hard-headed that we don't need that (much) gold to be beautiful and to be worth-ful. Or treat the value of glue the same as gold. Foolishness.

If you've been piecing yourself with glue, that's great. I commend you for taking positive care of your life. I know it is your right to choose which to use - glue, gold, etc :-).

Allow me to hope and pray that you will have an open heart and open mind to consider piecing yourself together, with solid foundation, gold refined by fire, through the help of Jesus.

But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. - Isaiah 64:8

You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. - Revelation 3:17-18 

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. - Psalm 34:18

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. - Psalm 147:3

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." - John 14:6