Imagine yourself as a beautiful, unique clay bowl when you were born. You were one of a kind. Your shape, your color, your size were all very special and you were deeply loved, appreciated and cared for by your parents. As you started to grow older you noticed that you were different from all the other kids. A few of those kids didn’t like your different qualities and they seemed jealous or afraid of you, so they called you names and excluded you from their games. This hurt. You might have started to think that they had good reason to not like you, like maybe you were unworthy of their admiration. This all had the effect of knocking a chip out of the beautiful pottery bowl that was yourself.

Sometime later, you were frustrated because you needed something that you couldn’t afford, but someone you knew had this thing and you figured that they didn’t really need it like you needed it. So you stole it. Your conscience felt a little bad about it, but you were able to push those thoughts down in your mind…at least mostly. You noticed something like a small crack in the side of your bowl.

Then someone you loved moved far away or even died. This was like a big crack in your bowl, so big that a part of your bowl broke off and shattered. Because of this loss, you felt so bad that you tried taking drugs to ease the pain and before you knew it, you felt you couldn’t live without these drugs. You were addicted and your life really started falling apart. There were more and more cracks in the beautiful bowl that once seemed so perfect. If you believed in God, you were pretty sure God had allowed all these things to happen to you because you weren’t the good person God wanted you to be. This life, and these cracks, were punishment for your imperfections and your failings. Your clay bowl was so cracked that you thought it was useless and ready for the junk pile.

But God apparently had a different plan. Rather than judge and punish you for your bad choices and painful experiences, He began to fill in all those cracks and shattered pieces, mending them so that your bowl was restored, still useful and possibly even more beautiful than before! And not only did He repair the gaps and missing pieces, He did it with the costliest materials.

This image of you as a once perfect, then broken, and finally restored clay pot is a spiritual dynamic found in the Bible…it’s called grace.

Japanese craftsmen employ an ancient technique called “Kintsugi” to repair broken clay pots and bowls. It fits with their philosophy that just because something breaks, it shouldn't be thrown away but rather restored. This is honoring the original by giving it new life. And the new bowl or pot has an extra special dimension, having been restored with precious materials like gold or silver.

The kintsugi technique reminds me of God’s working to restore us by His grace. Grace is defined as undeserved favor. We can’t restore ourselves by our willpower and strength alone. It’s a gift of God’s grace, as Paul mentions in his letter to the believers in Ephesus:

Ephesians 2:8
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand for us to do.

How amazing that God saves us! He restores us! He transforms us! And it not only benefits ourselves…it’s for the purpose of blessing others and to make the world a better place, “to do good works which He prepared beforehand for us to do.”

Here are some pictures of bowls restored with the Kintsugi process:

Be blessed! The only thing required to have this beautiful and valuable restorative process take place in your life is to receive the grace God is pouring into you. Look for it!

About the Author

John lives in Pleasant Hill with his dog, Gunnar, and a multitude of guests who enjoy the peace and beauty of the Cascade foothills. With three children and three grandchildren all living in Oregon, he is continually blessed with their company and the good food that always accompanies their get-togethers!

Have you ever experienced a season of goodness long enough that you started taking it for granted? Or that you started to believe that maybe if you kept living an exemplary life, it never would have to be interrupted?

I used to think life was supposed to be something always within my comfort zone, something kind of easy peasy, with just a bit of challenge thrown in to be interesting. If life happened to throw me a major curve ball, it was certainly from the devil.

Whether it is the devil on the other end of the imperfections, disruptions or catastrophes of our lives, I can’t say for sure, but one thing I do know is that life is full of good and bad, easy and difficult, joy and sorrow - and no one is exempt. Sometimes our own choices lead us down the wrong path and we end up injured, addicted or broken in some way.

Have you ever gotten trapped in an unhealthy habit which you felt powerless to escape from? I have. And I know many people who have as well. In those entanglements, people often have to “hit bottom” before they will finally reach out to find the help and resources they need to get free. And often when we think we (or someone we know) has hit bottom, we haven’t quite yet, and have to fall even deeper before we hit it. This is such a hard thing to experience for ourselves or watch happen to someone we love. It is really like a series of small deaths: a death of dreams and expectations, a death of our belief in rational solutions and spiritual platitudes, a death in believing that we are better than this.

I now no longer expect life to always be easy and happy, though thankfully sometimes it is. I know we will all experience “small deaths” while we are living on this earth. But I’ve seen enough of these that I’ve learned a very important truth: God’s grace is always deeper than we could ever fall. Hitting bottom is really falling into His hands, though it might not feel like that at the time. As we let God help us recover, we also can notice an amazing consequence: He fills in the broken areas of our lives with His “Gold Glue”.

In Colossians 1:17 it is written,
Jesus is before all things and in Him all things hold together.

He holds all things together and certainly that includes us and all our broken pieces! An ancient Japanese technique illustrates this well for us. It is called kintsugi and it is a practice used to restore broken pottery. Kintsugi is founded on the principle that just because something is broken does not mean it should be thrown away. Rather, it should be honored for its life and beauty by restoring it to wholeness through applying a glue filled with gold flakes. The effect is stunning. Though one will always be able to see where the piece of pottery was once broken, it now serves the purpose it was intended for with streaks of gold that “hold all things together” and now shines with an interesting and exceptional beauty.

Jesus is before all things and after all things, the Alpha and Omega. He holds all things together during our life here on earth, during our transition to the after-life, and in the heavenlies as well! There is nowhere that His grace is not present.

Isaiah states it so beautifully in Chapter 61:
God has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…..and to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

To God, absolutely no one is a “throw away.” Not only does God restore, repair and honor His broken people, sometimes He even allows us to participate with Him in this work by helping others we know who are experiencing brokenness of some kind. This all sounds like pure gold to me!!

About the Author

Loving Our Enemies Within | God’s Grace is Our Superpower

Cycles | Kintsugi

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