People say that monumental things in life either "make or break you". But I think to "make you", first they have to "break you". We've all been broken. We've all felt like things couldn't get any worse, and then somehow they do. Whether it was heartbreak, grief, depression, anxiety, or one of the many things that plagues people every day, we have been there at one point in time.
Why are we so scared or worried about being broken, or admitting that we are? Broken things get fixed every day.
The Japanese have an art called kintsugi. Which roughly translated means "golden repair". This art requires repairing broken pottery with a type of glue that is dusted with gold. They take something broken, and put it back together, more beautiful than before.
That can be us. In Mark 1 the leper says to Jesus, "If you will, you can make me clean." Jesus responds to him and says, "I will." Jesus makes all of us clean. He heals the leprosy in all of us, the broken parts of us. Whatever our leprosy might be, Jesus doesn't hesitate to make us clean. He just does it, and he does it out of love.
What a love that is! As humans, we often don't reflect the love of Jesus. We expect the love of Jesus to look like the love we give or receive. How glorious it is that we are completely wrong in that.
Because we are broken, that gives us the ability to be pieces of pottery glued back together with gold. Only this glue is so much better because it never goes away and it's a glue that keeps on giving and sticking and impacting us. We are constantly being repaired and healed and glued back together.
Jeremiah 18:6- "Family of Israel, you know that I can do the same thing with you. You are like the clay in the potter's hands, and I am the potter."
We are the clay and He is the potter constantly molding us into something better than we were before. He takes what is, and makes it something beautiful.
The leper had nothing to offer Jesus. He had nothing to give and yet Jesus didn't mind at all. Even in our most desolate and hurting places, Jesus doesn't mind.
There is no such thing as being too broken for Jesus. There is not a place in this world where He won't reach you. There will never be a time that His love won't make the darkness tremble and there will never be an instance where He won't stop shaping us and being the potter of our lives.
Life breaks us sometimes, it's true. But how lucky are we that we have a God that doesn't do the breaking, but comes in and does the healing anyways.
