Broken Dreams, Kintsugi and Jesus

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I recently gave a sermon at my church, Coastlands Church, in Peacehaven. As I planned it I started out thinking about veneers. I was thinking about how in churches we often put a veneer over what we are really thinking and feelings. In the course of my research I came across websites talking about the Japanese art of Kintsugi, or Kintsukuroi. This ancient Japanese art fascinated me immediately.

Kintsugi (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (Japanese: golden repair) is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold. The beauty of this pottery captured me straight away. It spoke not just to me as a thing of beauty but the spiritual message that goes with it seemed to shout off the page to me.

We all go through hard times. We all suffer. I have found that sometimes going through those hard times has left me feeling like broken pottery.  As the Psalmist says,

"I am forgotten as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery". Psalm 31:12 (NIV) 

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My guess is that we have all felt like that at times. But at those times it is good if we can remember another truth from Scripture, a truth found in Isaiah 64:8

Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

I realised that if we surrender the broken pieces of our lives to the Heavenly Potter then something beautiful happens. He will put us together again with gold, the gold of His healing, His Holy Spirit.

This is what Hannah, the prophet Samuel's mother, did in 1 Samuel. She poured out her heart, with all its broken dreams to the Lord, and He heard her pain and He put her back together again with gold.

Surrendering the broken pieces of our lives is hard - it is oh so hard, But worth it, oh so worth it!  I have found this to be true in my life. I pray it will be so in yours too.

If you would like to hear the full sermon you can do so either on YouTube, or via my website,  http://www.lyndaalsford.com.

God bless you