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I collect pieces in a jar, fragments of humanity, all with a different story- all broken.
Humanity, a delicate cracked vessel- pieced together whole by a loving Creator. And all the shattered bits, ourselves, are always seeking wholeness and redemption.
Shrouded in our own fragility, we look not to our Creator for completion, but to the fragments that surround us; Yet we cannot find healing in brokenness. We cannot find completion in another human being.
Only God can take what is fractured and mend it. Not only does He fix our brokenness, He uses it for His purposes:
"God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever."
~ Vance Havner
So why do we, in our broken state, expect wholeness from those we love? Broken glass cuts, and causes us to bleed. The brokenness of fellow humans causes us to mourn and weep and wrench.
Perhaps, if we acknowledge the fragility of others, we will treat them more carefully. We will use words that build up, not tear down. We will be more gentle and loving towards others, knowing that in our own frail states we need most of all to be loved. As we would gingerly pick up shards of broken glass, we gently lift the shards of a broken humanity by loving kindness.
And just like those bits of pottery, kept in a jar, our fractured lives can be something beautiful, pieces of an exquisite mosaic.
"Brokenness is the stripping of self-reliance and independence from God. The broken person has no confidence in his own righteousness or his own works, but he is cast in total dependence upon the grace of God working in and through him."
~Nancy Leigh DeMoss
God takes every splintered, shriveled circumstance in our lives and makes it whole.
Today, as we were getting out of our car, a Christmas ball rolled out and shattered on the ground. It made a terrible noise- the sound that only breaking glass can make, every tiny crystal crying: "Broken!"
Shards left voicelss on a cold ground, waiting to be picked up and pieced. But there were too many splinters of glass; the ball was irrevocably broken. Broken beyond repair.
Do you ever feel broken beyond repair? The amazing truth is that You can never be broken beyond repair in the hands of a loving Father.
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Will you let God pick up the pieces? Will you let Him put you back together?
"Leave the broken, irreversible past in God's hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him."
~Oswald Chambers
