Snapshot Reflections
September 25, 2008
I spent four hours the other day shifting through and backing up nearly 10,000 digital images I’ve taken over the past couple years. I tend to snap a lot. One of the things I like most about taking photos is that it helps me notice the things I’d normally miss when I’m scurrying through my day focused more on the next place I’m headed than on the place where I’m at in any particular moment.
Last summer D and I traveled to Greece and while in Athens we walked up to a small cluster of houses set on the face of the Acropolis just above the Plaka. The area is a known as Anafiotika and walking through the narrow steep passageways feels as though you’ve been transported to a Greek Island in the middle of the Mediterranean. All the buildings and in many areas the passageways, are painted in retina-blinding white and accented with vivid sea blue doors, roofs and trim. Here and there are splashes of plants and flowers. The area was so picturesque I lost control and broke into a photograph-taking frenzy. I must have taken a hundred photographs within the span of a few minutes before I sat down on one of the white-washed steps to rummage for a backup camera battery in the bottom of my bag. It was only when I sat and slowed down that I noticed a set of steps off to the side comprised of broken bits of stone, pottery sherds, and tile fragments. I was drawn to the varying textures and colors of the steps and the imperfection and irregularities in the steps only made them all the more interesting to me. Had I not slowed down and diverted my attention from all the dazzling white and blue that surrounded me, I would have missed these steps altogether. (Go here to see more photos from Anafiotika).
These steps in an Athenian hillside village built with shattered bits collected from here and there, provide access from one location to another. Climb the steps and you’re standing on higher ground in a new vantage point to the world around you. Steps are everywhere you look but these steps were unique, formed and transformed by material others would look at as nothing more than trash, yet someone saw those broken pieces, gathered them together and fit them together to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary.
Many of us have been deeply broken in our lives as we were pushed to the margins and cast out of the church or from our families. Some of us have had relationships end accompanied by the sound of our hearts shattering into bits as small as dust. Life does it to all of us and no one escapes it. Part of being human is being broken and shattered through traumatic moments, in destructive words, and by trust betrayed. God doesn’t do it to us. We do it to each other. And so we talk about living fragmented lives even as we hunger to live in wholeness. Job cries out that his spirit has been broken (Job 17:1). The Psalmist laments that he has become like nothing more than broken pottery (Psalm 31:12) even as he takes comfort in knowing the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). The words of the prophet Isaiah go on to assure us that God is sending (has sent) One who will heal/mend the brokenhearted (Isaiah 61:1).
D and I were given a beautiful ceramic chalice to use during communion at our first wedding but sometime during our move from campus housing to our current home the chalice was broken. One day with all the pieces spread out before me on the table, and armed with a little glue and a keen eye, I put the chalice back together with the addition of a few hairline cracks.
When we’re broken in heart and spirit how is it that God make us whole again? Does he restore us to our original design and structure like my broken communion chalice or might it be that God takes the bits and pieces and makes something entirely new? Can our brokenness be the very thing when placed in the hands of God that becomes the foundation that leads us further along in our journey of faith?
Posted in SnapShot Reflections
Sweet Hope Cookies
September 25th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Absolutely beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I think that it is important to note that only when we are broken and acknowlege it, we can be healed. If we wamder around with a big chip on our shoulder, God can’t come near us. For years I wandered here and there looking for Jesus to heal me but I had put up such walls that He couldn’t. I’m sure that He wanted to but He couldn’t until I let go of the bitterness and resentment against those who had hurt me. For me, I had to realize that I had to give up my “right” to revenge which was in effect a judgement and ask God to deal with those people. Now that doesn’t mean that I run to hug those people if I see them. It means that I do not wish them evil and I continue to try and stay away from them if I know that they would still try to convince me that I am damned. And while waiting, some of them have come to me with open arms and asked my forgiveness. What great joy there is then!
September 25th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I forgot something. (Sorry Mz Anita) . . I think that God creates something totally new out of us. He keeps all the good and discards the ruins and creates a totally new being fashioned after Him but only if we let Him. He never does anything unless we ALLOW Him to do it.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I’ve been in love with this image of God for quite awhile:
http://images.suite101.com/112738_potters_hands_600.jpg
This idea that God is a God of love and mercy and beauty, and that with his grace we can be whole and beautiful again.
In a bible study recently, we talked about how many of the leaders in the new and old testaments had really cracked lives. Moses was a murder, David was an adulterer, and Saul had made it his life’s goal to kill Christians. Yet all of them were transformed by God power and love! Awesome!
I look at the broken parts of my life, the junk that happens, and I can’t see how its going to come together into something of worth, but its so amazing to remember that God already has those blueprints and all I have to do is trust.
Thanks Anita!
September 26th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Therefore if any man (or woman) be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
September 27th, 2008 at 11:10 am
This post didn’t make me cry but it has remained on my mind since I first read it. I have thought about it and prayed about it. Studied my Bible looking for answers, meditated and simply pondered on the mystery. I think that I have the answer now. The part that bothered me was the hairline cracks. Having been a potter myself, I know that those hairline cracks often made a project unusable for the original purpose. If a pot or vase had already been through one or more firings, patching really doesn’t work well at all. There would always be a structural weakness there that could with minimal stress cause the pot, (mug, vase or whatever it was designed to be) to break completely.
This parable has always given me hope but I now realize that it is flawed too.
A water bearer in India had two large pots, one hung on each end of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water in his master’s house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfections, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for which it was made.
But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it
spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream.
“I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you.”
Why?” asked the bearer.
“What are you ashamed of?”
“I have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your master’s house.
Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts,” the pot said.
The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in his compassion he said, “As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.”
Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some.
But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure.
The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of your path, but not on the other pot’s side?
That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you’ve watered them.
For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers
to decorate my master’s table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.”
We have used this parable to justify ourselves at times but we don’t need to. Jesus is our justice and His Blood fills in and completely mends each of those cracks and chips. When making a pot, the very last firing is where you add gold. I find it very interesting that when trying to use a true red glaze, if you fire it too hot, the red may fire to gold because true red glazes need gold in them to stabilize the color.
I think I am done now Mz. Anita and eagerly await your next post.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Many years ago, now, when my church yanked me abruptly from children’s ministry because they were terrified of my homosexual influence on their children, I was processing the pain with the one person with whom I had ministered and who supported me. I lived in this downtown apartment with a fantastic view of the city from my fire escape window.
I hadn’t any furniture, though, and as I talked to her, I lay on the hardwood floor of my dark apartment, and gazed out the window. From where I lay, I didn’t see anything but the sky (you’d have to stand up to see the city), and the shadow of my fire escape.
Then, I saw this covered ceramic pot. Only I didn’t see it properly, because it was so dark. The pot had clearly been crushed, abused, somehow terribly broken. And it had been pieced back together, but with chinks missing, and clear seams where the pieces didn’t quite fit correctly together again. And through the chinks and seams flowed what seemed to be liquid light, the light whereby I could actually see the pot in the darkness through my window.
The pot was holding the light, but only through the cracks and seams could the light extend beyond it.
I don’t remember what my friend said to me when I told her what I saw, but it was clear to both of us that I was that pot. Crushed, broken, glued back together, fragile, but someone through whose ragged edges and scars the love of God can flow.
I’ve been thinking a lot of that lately, and your posting here captures another profound way to consider our cracked pot lives.
Thank you so much.