Daily Word of Grace # 107 (August 12, 2020)
While we live in a throwaway culture, we do not worship a throwaway God—but rather a restoring, healing, forgiving God. In Japan there is a special type of art called kintsugi in which broken pottery, rather than being thrown away, is reassembled and repaired with traces of precious metals like gold and silver, creating a beautiful piece of art from something that had been broken. The only people without some kind of brokenness in their lives are liars, which means we all need the grace of God, we all need God’s art of kintsugi. In his Second Letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul vulnerably wrote about how God’s grace enabled gospel ministry in his broken life: “We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be visible in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:7-10). In the reassembly and repairing of the brokenness in our lives God uses something infinitely more valuable than gold and silver—Jesus’ precious blood shed on the cross (Colossians 1:19-20)—so that the brokenness in our lives is where we actually see the beautiful restoring grace of God even more clearly.
Love and Prayers,
Dave