After praying for weeks about a talk I was asked to give on true beauty, God spoke to me late one night. I'd been confessing to a friend that I just wasn't feeling very beautiful and hadn't for some time. My Momma always told me "pretty is as pretty does..," But my inside pretty was looking, to me, just as bland as my outside ugly - even worse. GOD whispered, on my way home that night, "beauty comes from brokenness."
Brokenness - now that was something I could address... something I knew about. A memory immediately came to mind. Years ago a friend described a vision the LORD gave her about the brokeness, from abuse and disappointment, in her life; HE showed her a marred vase, pocked with holes and deep, angled cracks. It didn't look like much. She hated the ugly thing. Then GOD placed a light inside of it, and out through the abrasions shown and danced patterns of beauty and splendor. The LORD spoke to my friend that SHE was the pot, and told her its the brokenness of the vessel that makes the light so beautiful as it shines through.
With the memory, came inspiration. I envisioned a self portrait in 3D, a mosaic of sorts, pieced together from the remains of all my chipped and shattered plates, cups and teapots. I felt that an art project, in preparation for my talk, would serve me therapeutically giving me a chance to process the brokeness which has characterized the last several years of my life. Down to the basement, to retrieve my broken shard bin, I descended. My metaphor began.
As I looked at the piles of pieces which lay before me, my heart ached. I reminisced about each lovely possession, its usefulness and beauty which had, at one time, graced my kitchen, now ruined. I felt like those pieces, useless and broken - but NOT discarded! Why did I save this stuff?!!? Because.... I guessed, it was still precious to me. I wondered if GOD feels this way about us when HE looks at the broken pieces of our lives. Then I decided to arrange the shards by color and design; I began to get excited, seeing the potential for some interesting masterpiece. I no longer was looking at the pieces with the memory of their earlier form, but with eyes for their future possibilities. A new picture began to take shape in my mind as I stepped out of the role of "created-but-busted" and into the role of "creator."
A man, new to our at church, with whom I was only slightly acquainted, approached me after worship one morning and hesitantly told me he felt the LORD had given him a word and picture for me. The word was The Phoenix and the picture was of the mythological bird; I was to look it up on the web and find out more about it's story. What this young man couldn't have known was that I was supposed to be traveling with my husband, to a pastors' conference in Phoenix, Arizona, in a only a few short weeks! But stress and brokenness lay so heavily upon me that I was considering giving my ticket away to a pastor friend of Kevin's, and not even going. Depression had sapped my desire for the trip. I had been asking the LORD if HE wanted me there or not. This is what the Wikipedia enlightened me about the Phoenix: When this colorful bird, of gold, purple, red and green plumage, reaches the end of its life, it builds a nest and sets the nest and itself on fire. Both burn together and are reduced to ashes. Then up from the decimation rises the new young Phoenix, reborn out of the ashes. I share this story because it is a picture of beauty from brokenness.
GOD was speaking to me then, about a year ago, what he was reminding me as I began affixing fragments together, assembling a mosaic from the rubble. HE is in the business of bringing new life out of ashes and beauty from brokenness. HE remembers that we're dust (like ashes in the first place) and isn''t shocked at how we manage to chip, crack and shatter what is precious to HIM - our lives. I love the kind words of GOD's understanding in Psalm 103:13,14
The LORD has compassion on those who fear (honor) HIM;
for HE knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust...
We are fragile, but HE who created us in the first place gets more excited about the mosaic than the original. It is more colorful, it ends up stronger, but most of all, it has cracks, through which HIS light dances and shines with brilliant patterns of beauty. 2Corinthians speaks of this LIGHT GOD fills us with, as we come to trust in HIM:
"For GOD who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in he face of Christ.... But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from GOD, and not from us."
He goes on to talk about the conditions in which we find ourselves - no wonder we break:
"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed (we might add: shattered but not discarded.) - and the clincher: "We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body......LIFE ...at work in YOU!"
What does this mean: "We carry around Jesus Death..." I think this is the fragility of our emotions, our flesh, our life in these weak bodies - our jars of clay. Jesus is our example of producing beauty through brokenness. HE is GOD, who stepped down to earth, to dust and ashes, to show us how to carry HIS light in Jars Of Clay - and broken pottery.
As a baby..... HE was helpless, HE grew to be a man.....rejected by his own people; then HIS body was broken - even shattered on a cross. The Bible speaks of JESUS in the book of Isaiah chapter 53:
HE had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his physical appearance that we should desire him. HE was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, like one from whom men hide their faces....But speaking of the cross, and HIS death, Isaiah writes: He was pierced for our transgressions (our wickedness, mistakes, for everywhere we come of short of perfection) HE was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace, was upon HIM and by HIS wounds, we are healed."
When constructing my purple beauty, some of the broken pieces didn't fit - I had to take my hammer and re-break them, chiseling off rough edges. It was difficult with the ceramic; the shards were strong and sharp. I think WE are like this before GOD, already wrecked, but unwilling to be shaped, for fear of being further hurt or marred.
Our tendency, in these "Jars of Clay" is to go about life UNBROKEN - or pretending to be unbroken. We can become as solid as the hardest substance found - unbending, self centered, self ambitious and self protecting...our world tells us hold it together and look good on the outside. Our honest brokenness repels us. We don't want to look at it. But our brokenness is beautiful to GOD, who died for us; it draws HIM to hearts, evokes HIS compassion and LOVE. He longs to reshape the pieces into a well crafted masterpiece through which HIS beautiful light can dance and sparkle.
Yes, BethAnn! I so identify with your thoughts! This is so well written. The Lord does surely use you in your brokenness....and you are truly beautiful!
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