This may surprise some of you but when I was in high school I was a super art nerd. Throughout my high school career I took three extensive art courses to help fine-tune my artistic ability. Through these classes we not only worked on our drawing talents but we also painted, sculpted, and built works of art. One of the projects that I had the most fun doing was when I was given the chance to express my thoughts through stained glass.
If you are unfamiliar with how you make designs through stained glass, here is a basic breakdown. First you must decide on what image/template you are trying to create. Second, you trace and cut out your template on some cardboard. Third, you then take different pieces of broken glass in the colors you want and place them on the image. For instance if you are wanting to create a bird, during this step you would take and layout different color glass for the different feathers on the bird. This part looks pretty awful because it seems like a whole lot of nonsense jumbled together but you must trust the process. After that you wrap each piece of glass in a thin piece of copper foil. You then take a special tool and start burning the small pieces of glass/foil together (this step is called soldering). The glass will not look perfect because not all the small pieces are from the same original sheet of glass that was broken but that is the point. Once the long process of soldering is over you frame your creation and voila you have a stained glass work of art. That was exhausting to read but stay with me, I promise I will make a point.
Have you ever been so hurt or so broken from an experience in your life that you think there is no way you can recover from it? You are just so overwhelmed and devastated during that moment that you cannot see a light at the end of the tunnel. This could come from any type of situation. Whether you are suffering from rape, molestation, abandonment, divorce, a death, a breakup or any number of things, you have felt or are currently feeling broken. I think I can confidently say that we have all been there in one instance or another.
The other night I was talking and reflecting with my best friend on bizarre situations we found ourselves in in the past and how God was working behind the scenes. It is quite embarrassing how often I find myself working through a situation wondering where God is without realizing the whole time he is working on my behalf. My life consists of a lot of broken situations from a lot of mistakes and bad decisions I have made. I have been broken and devastated in the past but the beautiful thing is, I am better because I’ve been broken. A positive thing about being shattered is that it gives God a chance to create something beautiful out of your mess.
In the Japanese culture they use this term Kintsukuroi that means to repair with Gold. It is the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. They don’t just throw the broken pieces of pottery away but instead they improve on it while still allowing it to continue being useful. I realized that this is what God has been doing all along throughout my life. Those times where I was broken and alone God was secretly picking up the pieces, soldering the Gold in place to put me back together. The pieces I am, he gathered them and gave them back to me in all the right order. Every time I felt broken from being picked on, beat up, talked about, broken up with, abandoned, etc. he was there taking those different pieces of hurt and heartbreak and creating something that I couldn’t see at the moment.
When I have gone through the moments in life where I felt alone and broken I kept asking why? Why do I have to go through this? I thought since I was a Christian everything would be better. I didn’t understand why I was suffering. But recently I read John 9:2-3 that says, “His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” When we make the decision to follow Christ we must understand that it will not be just rainbows and butterflies but we are going to have to embrace suffering. In high school when I was creating the stained glass piece of art, it would have been impossible to complete if the glass had not been broken first.
You may be broken right now and cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. Something devastating might have happened to you recently where now you are left wounded and don’t know how you will recover but I just want to encourage you to hold on; you will get through it. God is picking up the different pieces of your hurt and heartbreak, like he did for me, and creating something that you can not see right now. You may be left with a scar but scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that you can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that you can heal and continue to live and continue to love.
The real beauty in a stained glass piece of art is seen best when you have a light shinning through it. If you go to many large older churches you can see big beautiful stained glass windows that really light up a room with an array of colors when the sun shines through. As we strive to be like Christ, our lives may look like a lot of mistakes and failures jumbled together but once we let the light of Jesus shine through them we can see a beautiful tapestry of God’s grace and love for us.
Please share to encourage someone else!
