Earlier this year I discovered the Japanese art of Kintsugi, the art of mending broken pottery with lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold, or silver or platinum. The technique visibly incorporates the repair into the new piece, highlighting the breakage instead of disguising it. The process usually results in something more beautiful and often more valuable than the original. Yet we easily discard that which is no longer perfect or functional. Mending, repairing and reusing are lost arts.
Knowing that imperfect objects can be remade into something more beautiful than the original gives me hope that that the imperfections in my life can be mended to make me into a more beautiful vessel then I was before.
None of us are without flaws yet God is able to mend and make all of us whole. And when God mends it is like pure gold has been added to our lives. There is beauty hidden in the brokenness all of us struggle with. God does not discard us because we are broken. Our remade selves are grounded in the transformation of our brokenness.
What is your response?
Watch the video below about the art of Kintsugi. What comes to your mind as you listen to this craftsman talk about his art? What areas in your life have already been mended with gold? What is the new beauty that has been formed in the mending? Write these down and spend time thanking God not just for the mending but for the brokenness that made possible new areas of beauty in your life.
Now read Colossians 1:15-20 from The Message
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.
Now listen to this video
What is one broken or dislocated part of your life in which you still long to see transformation and wholeness? Name it and lift it up before God in prayer. Ask God to act as the master craftsman mending and making whole your brokenness. Now sit in silence allowing God to speak to you. Is there a pathway to healing that God is revealing to you? What action steps might be necessary to find the wholeness and the beauty God intends for you?
4 comments
For me it is learning to live in the fracture, within the brokeness that reveals the heartbeat of the Trinity, Father, Son & Holy Spirit. I think we have a society that soaks itself in therapeutic techniques to ‘repair’ the wounds. Yet each wound is a beautiful reminder of the insubstantial nature of life; its unreliability, fragility amd momentary nature. Jesus stands before the Father, wounds visible for all eternity.
It’s in finding grace in the depth of the fracture, in the unhealable wound that the wonder of incarnation is discovered again and again. So for me I learn to live in the many fractures of my incomplete life, aware of the copletion that shall one day be mine, the reality of grace that sustains me in the pain whilst revealing an altogether counter cultural method to a world endlessly, restessly seeking personal peace and affluence in the mistaken assumption that these bring wholeness and security.
We need to embrace the break as a sanctified space for meditation and contemplation.
Amen to that Micha. I think you are right. Learning to find grace in the depths of the fracture and the sometimes unhealable wounds is something we all need to find peace in the midst of. That Christ’s incarnation can be manifested in the midst of that is part of the wonder and the mystery of it.
What a beautiful metaphor for the redemption of Christ! I’ll highlight this on the Christian Poets & Writers blog – http://christianpoetsandwriters.blogspot.com – and pray for God to guide us in bringing gold to our readers in Jesus’ Name.
Thanks Mary – I do pray it helps others to recognize the gold that God is integrating in their lives too.