A Broken Vessel

Very often, things that fall or are dropped shatter and lie in pieces on the floor.  If they're of value to us, the feeling of loss can overwhelm us as we realise that something that was very precious to us is gone forever in its original form.  We've all tried to glue a piece of an ornament back on, but very seldom with success, as even if it's a hairline crack, it's still visible to the naked eye. Most times we pick up the pieces and throw them away, to save us the pain of seeing it on the shelf in a form that it didn't have before.  I'm so thankful God isn't like that!

At various times in our lives, we unwillingly – and often undeservedly – go through experiences that crush us to the core.  We are unfairly dismissed, unkindly judged, used and sometimes threatened, till nothing of ourselves is recognisable. It takes us every inch of our diminished dignity to crawl under a stone until the storm passes us by, broken and battered by circumstances in life that we just didn't see heading our way. Often we are wrongly accused, and this makes the pain even deeper.  Anger, unforgiveness, disappointment, disillusionment, betrayal… emotions too abundant to mention kick in.

But – and it’s a big but – from personal experience I know that if we can throw our pain and our loss onto God, He can take our desperate calls for help and turn them into a great testimony of His mercy and grace!  He takes the broken pieces and He holds them in His hand. We have but one thing to do, and that's to yield totally to Him. As king David said, it is better to fall into the hands of a mighty God, than into the hands of any human being.

The only thing – and it's not a small thing – that can stop the healing process in our lives is if we do not accept the fact that we have made mistakes. If we are unwilling to ‘own’ our sin, if we continue to blame others for our misdemeanours, we will be like the children of Israel who walked for forty years and only covered a small area of land.  None of us have forty years to waste going in circles, and the quicker we can recognise our mistakes, the better it will be for ourselves ultimately, although excruciatingly painful in the present.

In my long(ish) lifetime, I've been at both sides of this argument.  I've sinned and been accused, fought for my rights, argued, complained bitterly, eventually realising that unless I repent, I have no hope of reconciliation with God, and actually He is the only important Person in this equation.  Through a very long and painful process, after ‘being dropped’, ‘broken into a million pieces’, the Grace of God reached down and picked me up.  I will never be the same again.  I have many ‘hair line cracks’ but He put me together again and gave me a new opportunity to learn to know Him all over again.  Disappointingly, I've also discovered that while it's bad enough to have sinned and to know you have sinned, it's even more painful to be in a place of total brokenness because of the actions of others, accused of something you haven't done.  Yet God also lives there.

I've discovered something wonderful, and I can say it with assurance. God painstakingly takes the broken pieces of our lives, our dreams, our relationships, our ministries, and He rebuilds us into a different person than we were before: a more gracious, understanding and merciful person. He makes us more patient, longsuffering and wise, using our pain to shape us into the image He wants us to be.

If we could only learn from those who tell us to walk uprightly, to keep as far away from sin as we possibly can, we would save ourselves so much injury and pain.  We often learn when it's almost too late and we've lost our dreams and our most precious jewels.

My emphatic desire is to walk before God in as much sincerity as I possibly can. To be ‘without a mask’, so that all double standards are utterly destroyed, and for those around me to see me as a ‘broken vessel’, cracked and bruised but eternally grateful for a second chance.  Only He can hold me lovingly enough to make me whole again.

Wendy Tomin

Co-Pastor, Kairos Church Timisoara

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