100% God

Gracefully Broken

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“Here I am, God
Arms wide open
Pouring out my life
Gracefully broken” (Matt Redman).

The prayer from tonight’s Kairos went something like this: Lord, into your hands I commit my brokenness.

That’s a good prayer for those of us who know that we are broken. After all, all of us are broken, but it’s more apparent in some. Not all of us are quite ready to admit it.

Some hide it and pretend it isn’t there.

Some make light of it and pretend that it doesn’t matter.

Some will act as if there’s nothing wrong with it the way it is.

The best way is to acknowledge it and give the pieces to Jesus.

There’s a kind of Japanese pottery called Kintsugi that takes broken vessels and mends them, using lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold. That way the cracks and imperfections aren’t hidden, but rather enhanced.

Rather than seeing beauty as flawless perfection, they see it as something that emerges out of a long history of suffering and survival.

Scars are what happens when the wounds of our broken places heal. Again, some will try to hide their scars and pretend they don’t exist.

My favorite writer, the one these blog posts are named after, one said, “On the last day, Jesus will look us over not for medals, diplomas, or honors, but for scars” (Brennan Manning).

Jesus chose to keep His scars in His resurrected body. He ascended into heaven with them. That says something about the honor and beauty of scars.

One quote from Kairos that stood out to me also came from an unlikely (at least to me) source, Ernest Hemingway. He said, “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

I like that.

Brokenness and scars not only can become beautiful, but in the nail-scarred hands of Jesus, they are beautiful.

PS Much of the credit for this blog post goes to Chris Brooks, Kairos pastor, and to the good folks at Google for providing the information on Kintsugi that I “borrowed.” It’s a good thing this isn’t a term paper, or I’d be in serious trouble.

 

Keep Your Eyes on Jesus

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“Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!” (Hebrews 12:1-3, The Message).

Keep your eyes on Jesus. That’s the key.

For me, if I look around me and compare myself with others, I either get despondent and envious or I get self-righteous with a false sense of superiority. It doesn’t end well.

If I look at my circumstances, I get overwhelmed. I don’t have a good enough perspective on the big picture to understand my present situation.

I feel like Bilbo from The Hobbit sometimes. In one scene, the dwarves ask him to climb a tree to see how near they are to the edge of the forest. Bilbo obliges, only to see an endless sea of trees. If he had only found a taller tree to climb, he might have found that they were much closer to the end than they imagined.

Keeping your eyes on Jesus is seeing your life from the absolute best vantage point. You realize that it’s not really about you after all but that you get to be a part of what Jesus is doing, and that’s huge. Remember, you may not feel like much of anything, but Jesus still chose you to be not just on His side but to be the very means He uses to turn the upside down world right side up again.

Keep your eyes on Jesus.

 

 

Just Call Me Joe

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Tonight at Kairos, Mike Glenn talked about Joseph. Not the one with the coat of many colors. The other one. You know. The one standing next to Mary in your nativity scene? That one.

Basically, most of us don’t know what to do with Joseph in our nativity scenes. He should be near Mary, watching over her and the baby Jesus. But what was his role that night?

Joseph was the one Mary handed her baby to on that night. Joseph was the one who named the child Jesus. Joseph would most likely have been the one who taught the growing Jesus a love for Scripture. Joseph was the one who raised Jesus who “kept increasing in wisdom and stature,  and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).

Jesus was 100% God, sure enough. But He was also 100% man and the Bible says that He wasn’t born fully grown and knowing everything. He grew and learned the way any human would.

When it comes to the story of Christmas, Mary gets most of the attention. Well, Jesus, then Mary. Then probably the shepherds and the wise men. Joseph doesn’t get much recognition.

But sometimes when God calls us to do the work that nobody notices, that can be the most sacred calling of all. Sometimes, the most faithful men and women of God are the ones nobody knows about who labor faithfully for years without awards or platitudes but with the ultimate reward of heaven’s applause. They’re the ones behind the scenes not in front the camera or front and center on the stage.

If you feel like no one sees what you do for God, God does. If you feel like what you do makes no difference, remember that even the smallest act of kindness done in the name of Christ can make all the difference in the world.

Just ask Joseph.