Cracked up

Three words sum up a long-held fascination of mine.  The trio arrive in a devotional email and when I read them, a proverbial light clicks on in my brain.

Made.  Unmade.  Remade.

The article explains the art of kintsugi. It is a Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with lacquer laced with gold.  (The name literally means golden joinery.)  A contemporary artist fashions sculptures, breaks them and repairs them with these golden veins.  Her work is made, unmade and remade.

I have long been drawn to Biblical accounts of people who go through a similar paradigm.  They roll along in life until God pulls the rug out from under them, causing them to have to radically shift their perspectives or practices.  I say this as if it’s just a process.  It’s way more painful than that.  It’s being torn down and built back up again.

It’s no joke.

But then again, it actually is.  Or, more accurately, a joke follows the same principal.  Let me explain.  First, here is the shortest joke I know that gets this point across:

Two men walk into a bar.  The third man ducks.

Granted, it’s not very funny.  But the aha moment comes when you reach the end and ponder the word, ducks.  It is a dead-end, forcing you to go back and figure out where you went wrong.  When you come to bar, you realize you should have thought of the hard metal type of bar.  Once you have that in mind, you can skip your way along the right path, with your ducks nicely lined up.

Let me draw this in a picture.

I call this The Joke Y.  In any joke, you are misled down the wrong path to a puzzling end, forcing you to return to the juncture where you went awry, and then follow the right path back out.  Most of the time, you do this is in a split-second.  (I am giving you the benefit of the doubt on our bar joke above.)

But spiritually, this process of being unmade and remade can take a much longer time.  Even a lifetime.

Later in the day, I happen across this quote by C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity.  He speaks to this same principal:

"We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."

Here’s what I’m pondering now.  Jesus was subjected to an unmaking, in a way.  First, he gave up his glory to be born in the form of a helpless baby.  Then, on the cross, he was broken for us, just like those Japanese bowls: “dashed into pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Ps. 2:9) Struck with the iron rod of God’s holy wrath.

Unmade.  Not because of his mistake, his errant road.  But because of ours.

But then Jesus was remade, laced with gold, glorified beyond earthly beauty.  Yet still bearing the scars of his unmaking.

I look up from my devotions and see that the lamp on my hotel desk is threaded with fissures.  It is a pointed (and amazingly timely) reminder of my own soul, broken and remade by His grace.

I’m glad I’m more than a little cracked myself.

Jesus, how you love us!  To think that you would allow yourself to be broken into pieces for us.  Lord, make us, even with all our flaws, be vessels for your glory.  May eyes be drawn to the veins of gold that hold us together.

Reader – Is there anything repaired in your house that can remind you of your blessed brokenness?