Broken Pieces

I sat listening, hearing the brokenness of their story. Shattered dreams, disappointment, regret, grief and my thoughts turned to the Mozaic Cross hanging on my wall. 

 This is the cross.  Can you see it?  Can you see what it is made of?  Broken pieces of fine bone china.  I love the feel and form of fine bone china.  I like to examine and admire the delicacy of the designs, the highlights of gold and hues of the glazes. It is expensive, exquisite and fragile.  Once broken, china becomes valueless and often, beyond repair!  I know this from bitter experience.

 Okay confession time. I was skipping in the front room, something that I been told not to do, when suddenly without warning my skipping rope caught my mother’s collection of fine bone china ornaments (Wedgewood china for those who are in the know) and sent them all flying to the tiled fireplace below – smashed into a thousand pieces! My sin of disobedience evident to all. I remember being horrified and then my mother rushing into the room to see what had happened.  I don’t think I need to tell you the rest of the story, except to say I spent the rest of my childhood in poverty, as any allowance I was ever likely to earn was earmarked to replace the china!  I learnt a great deal about sin (and china)!  It has consequences, broken things cannot be repaired and sin is very costly…

 Thus and so are our lives. We too are fragile, expensive and finely made. And, we too break easily. We break with sin – there is no other word for it. Whether it is our own sin or because of someone else’s sin, we break into a thousand little pieces – our body, our spirit, our soul. I suspect there is not one person alive who has not experienced brokenness.  Yet this is the wonder of Jesus Christ, he stood up announced to his home crowd that he had come 

“To preach the gospel to the poor; …to heal the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

To set at liberty those who are oppressed;”  (Luke 4:18) 

He would repair, heal and restore the brokenness of our lives. To do so would mean that he would take on our brokenness, experience our pain and our sorrow in the agony of the cross. It would be a costly “repair job”! 

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed. – Isaiah 53:4-5 

Take a moment now and gaze upon the cross what do you see?  Let the Holy Spirit speak to you.  What do you do with your brokenness? Sweeping it under the carpet isn’t going to work; being tough doesn’t restore; wallowing in pain doesn’t fix it either, only Jesus can heal your brokenness, only Jesus can take our shattered pieces and make them into something whole. 

As long as we hold on to our brokenness, we cannot find the healing we need. King David discovered when he realised the seriousness of his sin, the people he had hurt and his inability to “fix things up” that God did not despise a broken and a contrite heart.  In fact, admitting we are broken, and we need God’s help and healing makes us the perfect candidate to receive His love, forgiveness and restoration. 

Just like my mosaic cross, something very beautiful and meaningful can be made from our brokenness, but unless we let the master craftsman do his incredible work of repair, we will never see it. 

Broken hearts, broken dreams, broken lives are God’s specialty – He is the Master of Restoration.