by Dale Reeves

Story Pastor

 

Last Sunday at Christ’s Church, I shared a communion meditation that concerns one of my favorite coffee mugs. A few years ago, my wife and I drove out west and visited seven national parks over the course of two weeks. After Karen got her passport stamp in her book, we browsed the gift shop at Yellowstone National Park. I didn’t need another coffee mug, but I couldn’t resist the one pictured above, because I love the color, the size, the map inside it, and the picture of the bison on the front and back, along with the year 1872, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed Yellowstone into law as the first federally protected national park.

 

In the mornings I often bring my coffee to the church building in this beauty. My wife had mentioned several times that I was living dangerously by taking this ceramic mug to church rather than using an insulated travel mug. As usual, she was right. A week ago last Tuesday, I was scurrying around the office workroom when it happened—I dropped the mug and watched the handle shatter into several pieces. Several church staff heard me yell, “Oh no!” I quickly grabbed the pieces on the floor and put them in my pocket as I headed off to staff meeting, planning to glue my treasured coffee cup back together later that evening.

 

When I arrived home that afternoon and laid out the pieces on our kitchen table, I grabbed the superglue, started assembling the shattered pieces back together, and realized the handle had shattered in four pieces—and I only had three of them. I went back to church that evening for Man Church and was hoping I would find the fourth piece. I crawled around the floor in the workroom. No piece to be found! Then, I checked the garbage can in there, hoping maybe one of our staff had picked it up and thrown it away. Sure enough, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. After Man Church that evening, I started letting the magic of superglue do its thing. Three pieces back in, pretty good! When I started to put the last piece in, I discovered it wouldn’t fit very well. If the other pieces didn’t fit exactly right, the fourth piece couldn’t complete the task. After quite a bit of taking a sanding block to the pieces, I was able to sand the ceramic dust just enough to get the fourth piece glued in. Not perfect, but I was happy with the result.

 

Jars of Clay

After sharing this story on Sunday, I received a message from one of our difference makers of our church, Marsha Collins. She told me about a book study she had done with some of her buddies a few years ago in which the author introduced them to the concept of kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken objects using gold or silver epoxy. The Japanese believe that when something has suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful. By mending the cracks and chips of the broken object, then mixing in gold, silver, or platinum, the process actually emphasizes the imperfections rather than hiding them. Marsha took this idea and glued, then used gold paint, to accent the broken cracks of a pot that had been broken in her home. There is beauty in brokenness—not only in objects, but in our very lives.

 

The apostle Paul knew this when he told the followers of Jesus that they had treasures in “jars of clay.” We read in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies” (NLT).

 

In his grace and mercy our God has chosen to entrust the message of his gospel to human vessels—ordinary and very fragile. The power and glory come from God, not from ourselves. If you are a member of the human race, there is no escaping it. If you haven’t been shattered in some way yet, you will. As Paul says, you might have been hard-pressed, perplexed, knocked down, broken—but you have never been abandoned by God!

 

This past week I began an 8-week journey with ten brave souls who are walking through a grief recovery process with me. Whenever I lead a grief recovery group, inevitably one or more of them always ask, “Are you going to fix me?” My answer is always the same. “No, I’m not going to fix you. There’s nothing wrong with you. God wired you to care for others, and when there is some kind of loss that impacts you, you will have a broken heart. I only know three people who can ‘fix’ your broken heart—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” Will you join me in prayer these next two months as these folks walk through their grief journeys together?

 

A Beautiful Mosaic

Just as it took me quite some time to sand down the rough edges of my ceramic pieces to try and get them to fit back together, God is still polishing and sanding out the rough edges of our lives—often in moments of silence and solitude. This past Sunday, as our lead pastor Brad Wilson was talking about the forty days Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his earthly ministry, Brad said, “The desert is a place of solitude, but it is also a place of clarity.” If you missed that teaching, you can check it out here.

 

A mosaic is a form of art in which an image or pattern is created by setting small pieces of colored materials, such as stone, glass, or tile, into a surface using adhesive or mortar. Our God creates beautiful mosaics out of our lives when we choose to give him all our broken pieces. If we will allow him, God will fashion us, and then he will fashion us some more, using all the broken pieces in our lives to create a beautiful mosaic.

 

The prophet Jeremiah obeyed God when he said, “‘Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.’ So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel. But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over” (Jeremiah 18:2-4, NLT).

 

What broken pieces do you need to bring to your loving heavenly Father today?