Sunday April 23, 2023

 

Don’t we all know it all too well?

“Life breaks, and hearts break, and our stories break…”

“The unbelievable happens, the call comes… people you love slip from your hands, gone, and you aren’t sure how you can live through the way your heart keeps cracking.”

“You’ve been scarred by hope that broke and the shards of all you imagined ending up cutting your heart unimaginably deep.”

Yes: at some point in our lives, usually quite unexpectedly, it happens to us all. 

We fall. 

We break. 

We shatter. 

Our beauty is gone. 

Our usefulness is gone. 

The damage, to us and to others, appears irreparable. 

And our tendency, our seemingly only alternative, is to throw “us” away.

But God… BUT GOD! All praise be to His wonderful name! GOD IS NOT LIKE US!

God does not see us as we see us. 

God does not do with us as we do with us.

Because God does not feel about us as we feel about us.

When we fall and break, WE only see our brokenness beyond repair. We believe our only option is to be tossed and disposed of. Because we have lost the heart of how valuable, how treasured, how cherished we truly are!

But, when we fall and break, GOD does not only see the supposedly irreparable shards of our hearts and lives. He does not automatically and uncaringly discard them. Because, to Him, we are simply too valuable to just be scrapped. In His heart of eternal love for us, we must be salvaged, somehow. And in His infinite care and creativity, He is able to do so - one shard at a time. 

Yes. “Life breaks, and hearts break, and our stories break. BUT NOTHING CAN BREAK THE REDEMPTIVE STORYLINES OF GOD.” 

“What seems impossibly wrecked can still possibly be mended with golden seams.”

All praise be to God! Who takes all our brokenness and redeems it - and rewrites the stories of our lives into something whole and beautiful and good! Who takes the seemingly “impossibly wrecked” that is us - mends us with “the golden seams” of His mercy and grace - and remakes us into something completely new, and even more exquisite and stunning than we were before!

So, “why pretend that your heart has never had to be mended? Why let there be a shaming in our pain, when there can be a reclaiming? There doesn’t have to be shame in pain. There doesn’t have to be any pretending to hide a mending. There can be a way to heal that is holy.” 

Even Jesus, our glorious and exalted Jesus, will be remembered and revered for all eternity not just as THE LAMB - but as the Lamb THAT WAS SLAIN. His scars are not and will not be hidden. His former brokenness is no longer and will never be a humiliation. His earthly pain is no longer and will never more be a shame. Forever and ever He will wear His “being slain” as a badge of honor and dignity and praise. Not pretending that it never happened, not hiding that it did - but carrying it like a crown of worthiness and glory upon His head. 

Can it therefore not be the same with us? Yes. In our brokenness, we can become beautiful and useful objects of the Japanese art of Kintsugi: mended back together again with the golden joinings of God’s love and goodness. Forever, gratefully and joyously carrying those gilded seams as scars of God’s gracious healing and gracious renewing in our hearts and lives. 

Friend: “What is broken can be joined into some kind of beauty again when the heart is joined to God’s.”

No matter how broken and shattered we once are, you and I can be picked up, with deepest love and determination be mended back together again, and “be made into a mosaic of grace”. 

 

All quotes from @annvoskamp. All additional thoughts from @bevdramirez. 

 

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