I decided to run over to a nearby town to a craft show that afternoon. On the way a teenager high on some substance struck my brand new Chevy Caprice in the rear literally pleating the car. Well, all that greenware didn’t fare too well! It was broken and crumbled into many, many pieces and dust. I didn’t know it right away, but I had a broken neck. It’s strange how things take on significance: just that week I had heard someone say on the radio that life breaks us all and afterward some of us are stronger in the places that were broken. I remembered those words that fall Saturday afternoon. I had no idea how often I would ponder them over the next weeks and months.
Brokenness is a HUGE subject worthy of great
contemplation! The truth is that all of
us are broken and in desperate need of restoration. That’s why Jesus came - to
make that restoration process possible!
In part of my life I teach Latin. Roman history is part of
teaching Latin. In almost any marketplace in any city in the Roman Empire potters
displayed their wares. They developed a clever trick to hide flawed
workmanship or damage. When a pot had a flaw or a crack, they would take wax and smooth
it over the flaws or press it tightly into the cracks. The objective was to
deceive the customer into buying a defective product thinking it was true and
solid. Can you imagine what happened to those pots when they were filled with
water or wine especially on a hot day? They would spring leaks. This practice
gave potters a bad name in general. Most of these potter merchants were
travelers. By the time their deceit was discovered, they were far down the
road, swallowed up by the next city or town or wherever. There was no complaint
department. As a result sales slumped,
profits were threatened, honest artists were shamed by the actions of others.
Pottery artists with integrity were sick and tired of being
lumped together with these scoundrels. So, they began to sign their names on
the bottom of all their new pieces along with this stamp: SINE CERA (without wax). We actually get our English word sincere from this practice. If the pottery
had integrity, was whole and not damaged, then it was also sine cera (without wax).
The pottery not stamped sine cera
appeared to be undamaged because of the wax. Surprise, surprise when that pot
was used for a hot liquid!
Sadly we don’t value brokenness in our culture. We shy from it! We avert our eyes. Worse, we avert our hearts! We think and live, at least most of us do, as though anything or anyone damaged, smashed, disabled is of little or no value. That is as much a lie as the non-sine cera pots of ancient times!
God is in the full-time business of fixing brokenness. He could make brokenness as though it never happened, but He doesn’t. Instead He chooses to display the beauty of brokenness! The prophet Malachi wrote in 3:2-3: …He will be like a refiner’s fire … He will sit as a refiner and purifier of siver…
John Piper of Desiring God Ministries observes, He is a refiner's fire, and that makes all the difference. A refiner's fire does not destroy indiscriminately like a forest fire. A refiner's fire does not consume completely like the fire of an incinerator. A refiner's fire refines. It purifies. It melts down the bar of silver or gold, separates out the impurities that ruin its value, burns them up, and leaves the silver and gold intact. He is like a refiner's fire. (He Is Like a Refiner's Fire, November 29, 1987)
*The black pot is credited to Lakeside Pottery - http://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/kintsugi-repairing-ceramic-with-gold-and-lacquer-better-than-new.htmwww.lakesidepottery.com
