I stumbled across a word for the day on a dictionary website while looking up another word definition and the word for Sunday was was frangible \FRAN-juh-buhl\ Capable of being broken and it sparked a little train of thought. Meringues are frangible, pottery objects bought by distant relatives that don't coordinate with anything are surprisingly frangible.....I am frangible.
It's already sounding less positive than I usually am …for most of us the word ‘broken’ means useless and we live in a throw away society so something broken is often just discarded. With meringues the breakage is very final, unless you count Eton Mess which is just delaying the inevitable albeit in a very delicious way, pottery can by glued back together but will always be weakened by the break, so what about me? What happens when I am broken.
A further look into the frangible definition threw up the word brittle, and yet when I first realized how broken I was it was not when I was “hard, brittle” but when I was “soft and yielding”. For me this was when I first met God, opening my heart, breaking down the hard defensive front , trusting that the world would not fall apart, that true friends would still be there, that my husband would still love me, I just needed to be all that God wanted me to be.
Becoming a Christian did not make me broken, let’s be clear about that, I was well broken before then but had papered over the cracks as society does not promote the broken. Take as an example a glass vase given as a wedding present that becomes chipped and so no longer fit for purpose... do you get rid of it, or banish to the loft? The more sentimental may rearrange it so the damage is not visible - turn it round to show the best side, you see it is not in our nature to show our damage to the world.
Part of the security in acknowledging I was broken was an assurance that God could restore me, that my failings would not be left on display for all to see. I did trust and I did break but my earthly thinking kept nagging me and telling me that something “restored” is never as valuable as the original, there are scars, marks, wear and tear. A cracked jug even when restored does not mean it can be used to carry water again, it is flawed, has a weak spot, and whilst my head knows that Gods restoring hand is more powerful than any earthly hand my heart lagged a little behind.
My mind has continued to wander round this subject this week and I could not work out why I could finish this blog, and I determined that this was because it left me with an unresolved issue, with a discontent in my heart, then I came across a photo I took last year with this quote.
“For most of us the word broken means useless, yet in the upside down world of Gods kingdom, broken can mean ready to be used as when a soul is broken before God and yielded. A mosaic is a piece of art that begins with broken pieces and then turns something beautiful. We are all God’s mosaic and brokenness crafted by his wise and skilful hand into a work of beauty."
And then it dawned on me in my heart – God did not just “patch up” up bits that weren’t right in the old me. My scars are not there as a reminder of my past, to be turned towards the wall to appease society but rather that God has taken all that I have yielded and broken before him and not simply tried to put it back together so that I can do my will better but has started to create something more beautiful, with a new purpose, to fulfil His will, and the cracks and flaws are essential to making that happen.
I know it’s not rocket science and I am sometimes slow on the uptake, but when I get it ...well then there is no stopping me!!
For we are Gods masterpieces (not thrown together). He has created us anew (not patched up the old) in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the things that He (not we) planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:10 with my own emphasis
