This life is tough isn’t it? I mean some days it is just like ‘ugh I cannot wait to get back to my bed’. And there are those moments during the tough times that can be truly life defining for you. Cracks can start to appear in our way of living, and people start to pick up on them, even though you try your best to hide your problems and insecurities. All of a sudden, not only are you anxious about the original cracks, but you’re even more anxious because you’re afraid what people might think of you with your faults and failures. Yeah. Life sucks sometimes.

 

The apostle Paul was very creative when giving analogies about who we are, he compares the church to a body with Jesus as the head, and all parts work together, but when one part isn’t, the body suffers. Yeah, I can understand that, that one is easy…I think. But then there is another one, where he compares us to jars of clay carrying a treasure. The treasure being the good news of Jesus. I’m all for that second part, give me Jesus any day. But jars of clay?! Has Paul gone mad? Clay is incredibly brittle, and any sort of damage done will make it obsolete.

 

Kintsugi is a Japanese art. What happens here is when a plate, a mug or a glass breaks. When items seemed to have fulfilled their purpose, we’ll throw them in the bin and replace them with different ones. But Kintsugi says no. Bring that broken item to me and I’ll fix it. The artist takes all the shards and puts them back together the way they were, but there is something different about it now. The cracks are clearly visible because they are covered with gold. Yes gold! Kintsugi says we are all broken pieces of pottery, but we can be put back together, piece by piece and the mark of the maker is clearly evident. Hmm, I wonder where they got that from?

 

This life can be full of disappointments and setbacks; it is how we react that shows who we are. Are you someone who will hide your problems, or are you so bold as to approach the throne of grace and let God work in your life? I wonder what the global church would look like if we stopped presenting ourselves as having it all together and got to grips with the reality of the pain and suffering that people go through on a daily basis. I wonder can we lose the fear of having our faults and frailties on show but show the gold of God’s restorative power in our lives. So people won’t see the cracks, they’ll see the work of the creator using broken people to bring about change in a broken world.

 

I wonder…