Broken
photo used by permission Lakeside Pottery Studio
Broken things
Broken hearts
Shattered dreams
Broken Lives
Damaged, wounded, less than perfect. Our lives so shattered that we believe our brokenness has left us useless, with no real value. We try, with no success, to function normally, but we just go through the motions. Our pain, our brokenness paralyzes us. The damage to our bodies, our hearts, and our souls is so severe, that it goes beyond our ability to heal ourselves. We are living with an agony that leaves us with no hope of ever being “ok” again.
So many times, we end up drowning in our brokenness, never healing. Drowning in a darkness that whispers lies into our ears and our hearts. We become so damaged by the lies that are funneled to our souls, that we are convinced have nothing useful to add to life.
Embarrassed we try to hide our brokenness. We try to cover up the cracks using whatever glue that we can find. Always in search of that “superglue” that dries clear. A patch, a quick fix. But it never really hides our pain.
In our consumeristic society, when something gets broken, we throw it out. Cracked, shattered, in too many pieces, we toss it. We trash our broken objects and our broken lives. Our value is much lower because of the damage we have suffered. Like a disposable item, our brokenness deems us useless so we give up, discarding our dreams.
But…
Our brokenness doesn’t have to be the end of our story.
photos used by permission of Lakeside Pottery Studio
Kintsukuroi
The Japanese have a way of repairing cracked pottery. It’s called Kintsugi, or Kintsukuroi, and it means “golden joinery” or the “golden repair”. The centuries-old technique has become a collectible Japanese art form. The repair involves using gold dust and resin or lacquer to reattach broken pieces. The Japanese saw this method of repair as an opportunity to keep the object from being thrown away.
Kintsugi not only repairs what is broken, but it adds a new value to the object. A new life. This process highlights the cracks as it repairs, filling them with gold. Beautiful golden seams telling a story of its brokenness, and its restoration. Kintsugi considers the object’s brokenness and its golden repair part of its history and increases its value.
“Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated…” Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics
In Kintsugi, the golden seams of repair point to an event in the life of the object. A brokenness restored. And the lie that called for the object’s end becomes untrue. Restoration.
A beautiful restoration.
A story of survival
Good as new.
No, Better than Before
Better than before. The object has a new value, a new story, laced with gold and restoration. Turning that which is broken into something beautiful and more valuable than before? What an amazing concept.
We Have a Healer
We have a healer. A restorer.
God breaks through those lies. You know the ones. The lies that were whispered to convince us that our shattered lives are beyond even the tiniest sliver of hope. God sees us, me and you. He sees us and notices our cracks, our brokenness. Our heavenly Father still calls us beautiful and desires more than anything to restore our broken spirits. Our Creator says you are never beyond repair. Jesus even tells us that He was sent to heal the broken-hearted. While He was in Nazareth, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the scriptures. Someone handed him a scroll, and he unrolled it to the place where it said:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has appointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the broken-hearted and to announce that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed.” Luke 4:16 , Isaiah 61:1
Jesus Came to Us
So, Jesus came to us, to comfort our broken hearts. The Lord has appointed me….God, our heavenly Father sent him! As I was studying this subject, I discovered something I had never seen before. Probably the most famous scripture, the most memorized verse in the entire Bible came to mind.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” John 3:16
I decided to dissect this scripture and study each word. For Christmas, a couple of years ago, my husband gave me an amazing gift, an NASB Hebrew/Greek Key Study Bible. There is no “word for word” translation between the ancient languages and English because our scriptures came to us in Greek and Hebrew. Because of this, I am interested in what context the words were used. So, the research began.
Consider the John 3:16 passage, “For God so love the world”, the word “world” refers to the Greek word – Kos’mos: meaning the world and its inhabitants.
But there is more! There is a little note that says, Kosmos-probably from the base of 2805. So, I looked up 2805 and it was the word “Klauthmos”: which means wailing or weeping. And another note saying Klauthmos is related to the word 2799, Klaio: which means to wail aloud and to cry silently.
WHAT?
Wait! What? For God, so loved the world, and all its inhabitants, the wailing, the weeping, those who wail aloud and those who cry silently? He loved the broken-hearted so much, that He sent His Only Son! What a revelation!
Jesus Our Healer
So Jesus came to us, the broken, the weeping. Jesus came FOR us. He took on our brokenness at the cross. Jesus was broken that we may be restored. The blood of our Savior’s brokenness satisfied the price of our sin.
Jesus has already made the provisions for our healing. My healing, and yours. And His scars tell the beautiful story of OUR restoration. Your scars have a story too.
“The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” Psalms 34:18
Jesus pours in His love like the golden glue the Japanese used. His love penetrates the deepest cracks in the darkest places of our souls. God binds our brokenness and heals us. He puts us back together.
“He heals the broken hearted, binding up their wounds” Psalms 147:3
Life, with all its burdens, those that were our bad choices, and those that were circumstances beyond our control, leave us broken. But God knows our value, our beauty, even when we don’t. He takes all our brokenness and paints our jagged edges with his grace, sealing up our sorrow, our self-judgment, our fear, and disappointments.
When we bring our broken lives to the feet of Jesus, He takes all the pieces and puts them back together with his healing grace, like gold, he mends the broken and makes us better than new.
Beautifully Restored
Restored, not simply patched together, but beautifully healed. His grace, like the Japanese gold, seals the cracks of our broken spirits. He repairs us, restores us. His original creation created beautifully in His image. A beautiful work of art.
When we allow Jesus to restore us, we begin to see that our brokenness and darkness that robbed us of all joy, can now be replaced with His peace.
His golden glue of grace.
Restored, put back together with golden trails of grace as a testimony of our restoration. God can repair our brokenness in a way that others can see His glory. Your restoration, complete with your scars, may be the hope, the only hope that another broken soul can see. When we come to God with our brokenness, we can become renewed. A personal witness of what God can do. Our brokenness, mine and yours, healed by His loving touch.
A great book to read on this subject:
Heavenly Father, in Jesus Holy name, I ask you to be the golden glue that binds the shattered pieces of our lives. Put us back together. Let our lives be a testimony of your grace. Your amazing grace. Help us to see ourselves beautiful, the way you see us, your creation. Father, we praise you for renewing us and changing our stories.
Another great book on putting your life back together is this one!
Or you can get a hard copy like this!
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Or you can get the audio book here
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