"When I was young, I threw a rock through the window of an old car in my alley. The glass broke easily, and the hole remained for a week or so until it was closed with a black trash bag. The owner confronted me about the window (I was the kid next door and the most likely rock-thrower), but I didn't own up and I wasn't able to fix the damage. A few months later I escaped the knowing eyes of our neighbor. My family moved across town, and my last memory of my childhood home was driving away and looking at the Buick with the missing window.
Recently, a photographer friend of mind did an art show featuring some broken items transformed. The first picture was of a bus with a shattered windshield, and the picture brought me back to that alley and my neighbor's Buick. Looking at the picture, feelings of guilt from my past flared up for me, and then the slide changed. The new photograph was not of a bus with a brand new windshield like I expected. Instead, the shot was of all the broken glass carefully collected, dyed and reassembled in an elaborate mosaic. The piece was beautiful, far more impressive than a replaced windshiled. Someone had removed all those shards of glass in turn and envisioned a future for them all."
-Jeff Cook, Relevant Magazine, pg. 43
To find the article I took this from, go here. It's a pretty cool Christian, design magazine a friend showed me.
This was the intro to the article, which is essentially about heaven. But these two paragraphs reminded me of the image I had received in my mind about a week ago and wrote about in my post called "Broken Pieces". It took the vision of broken pieces and took it a step farther. Jesus had collected the pieces, and then saw a vision for each broken part; he saw a vision and a beautiful future that each shattered piece, that was full of pain and suffering, could partake in and was essential for the whole piece. He takes our broken parts, and uses them, and transforms them into a breath-taking work of art.
I see this to be true as I read through Genesis and learn about Jacob's story and how messed up he was. We praise Jacob, but he also stole from his own brother, and tricked his father, and did all sorts of things. His family was broken, where he was forced to take two wives, and then two more, and showed favoritism to certain kids, leaving the others to feel neglected and unloved. His sons plunder a city, and then turn against each other and even sell one of their own off for slavery, and then lie about it to Jacob. There's no way around it: this is a messed up family.
However, God takes this broken family, full of each individual's faults and crimes, and somehow, was able to create the 12 tribes of Israel from this very family, fulfilling his promises to Abraham. God states that this very nation will bless the earth. As the story goes on, it is through these people drawing closer to God that they are able to reconcile with one another and receive blessings from God. They help others prosper and grow. And it is from this lineage that Jesus is born, the very man that saves humanity. God took their shattered relationships, broken hearts and souls, their horrible sins and mistakes, and creates a beautiful piece of reconciliation, second chances, renewal, and hope.
I'm a perfectionist and don't like to make mistakes. I sometimes dread how much I will mess up and how irrevocable the mess I create will be. When you're standing in the middle of chaos, and just feel like there's no way anything can be fixed, it feels overwhelming and hopeless. But that's not true with God. He is so much bigger than ourselves and all of our mistakes combined. Christians like to use the word "redemption" or say "We are redeemed". I never fully understood what that meant, but now I see that it means that God frees us from blame and takes our faults and uses them for His good. He says "OK. So you messed up. No worries. I'll make it work."
All of this reminds me of something C.S. Lewis writes in "The Great Divorce" on p. 69:
"This is what mortals misundersatnd. They say of some temporal suffering,"No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory."
God takes every fault or mistake we ever make and somehow turns it into a beautiful piece of the puzzle that is ourselves. As we draw closer to Him, we then see that our mistakes were only stepping stones in becoming a masterpiece and drawing closer to Him.
It's OK to make mistakes. You're human and you will do that. Don't live in fear of those mistakes, but live fearlessly, knowing that God is much bigger than you. Turn to Him, and let him take the broken piece of glass, transform it, and place it in along with the rest of the artwork.
:)
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