“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3 (NIV)
I heard a loud crash in the kitchen and the even louder scream of young girl following it. My ear discerned that what had fallen was not plastic, but glass from the sound of the shattering on the unforgiving tile floor. With visions of cut hands or feet in my head, I ran in to find my six-year-old daughter holding two of the largest shards of glass in her hands. I not so gently voiced my concern about the danger of her cutting herself on the sharp edges and demanded that she drop them right then. She did so immediately. Then she looked up at me, with tears swimming in her eyes, and asked:
“Mommy, can we glue it back together?”
Looking at the hundred plus pieces of glass lying in front of her feet, I knew that this would be an impossible task. The glass was one for drinking. No one would be able to safely drink from it again. Glue would be an unstable and inappropriate remedy for this broken vessel. I shook my head no and grabbed for the broom and dust pan. It took several minutes to clean up the minute pieces that had made their way under the stove, cupboards, and refrigerator. After I had swept all the pieces I could find into the dust pan, I opened the garbage container lid and poured the glass into its open mouth.
Girlfriends, there are shatterings in our lives far beyond our ability to fix. We can be completely taken off guard by the loud crashes they make and be just as helpless to fix them as my daughter was that day. In our incompetent hands, the broken bits can cause us to bleed profusely. The best we could do in our own finite ability for those things that are shattered is to throw them away. No amount of “glue” is going to fix what has happened.
But there is a Redeemer. Jesus Christ has the ability to take that which is broken, fragmented, and hazardous to us when we try to fix it, and put it all back together again. The result may be that the thing that was shattered does not look nearly as flawless as it once did. But when He does the healing, the miraculous happens. With the apparent evidence of brokenness, that vessel becomes more beautiful than ever, more strengthened than ever, and more purposeful than ever. Those qualities can never be realized when I try to glue back together the broken shards. My God can heal, renew, and restore. But I must leave that process to Him and stay out of it.
Thank You, Jesus, that You can take the most shattered and broken things in my life and use the scars to bring healing to others. Teach me to walk away from what only You can redeem. I will cut myself badly when I try to
