And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:3-5).
“To err is human.” “Nobody’s perfect.” “I am a sinner.”
These clichés allow us to express how broken we are without genuinely acknowledging its depth. But in our quiet moments, in the silence and darkness in the middle of the night, and sometimes in the full light of day in the view of everyone we know, our brokenness is put on display. For a time, we can not deny, minimize, rationalize, or ignore it. But eventually we have to admit what Bob Dylan sang, “everything is broken.”
In Christ, we have an answer to our brokenness. He took all our sin, imperfections, and failures and nailed them to the cross. Yet, despite his victory over them, we are still broken.
The Japanese art of kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, silver, or platinum. It treats the object’s brokenness as part of its history instead of something to be hidden or disguised. A ceramic piece repaired through kintsugi is striking to see—the gold lines stretching across the object draw the eye. It is no wonder that some have purposely broken pottery solely to fix it this way.
This is the promise of the gospel: that one day everything sad will come untrue, and everything broken will be made new. We will no longer be broken. But our brokenness will not be hidden; we will not need to pretend we never were broken. We will be repaired, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ—and we will be more beautiful for having been broken.
Prayer:
Lord, I am not perfect. I am farther from perfect than I am willing to admit. Yet you promise a day when all will be made new, when you will heal my brokenness for all time. By your grace, allow me to taste that day right now, seeing it in the lives of those around me.