Broken but Beautiful
We were excited to welcome Justyn Towler from Renewal as our guest speaker recently. He brought a challenging and encouraging message for Jubilee Church. You can listen to Justyn’s message or watch the video: Broken but Beautiful
His theme of ‘broken but beautiful’ reminded me of the Japanese art of Kintsugi. This can be described as golden seams or golden joinery.
Kintsugi is an ancient method of fixing broken pottery. Rather than trying to hide a repaired join by using a transparent glue, this method highlights the joins by using a special tree sap lacquer dusted with powdered gold. The repaired pot now has beautiful ‘seams’ of gold. In fact the pot becomes a new piece of art, often more beautiful and of more value than the original.
The idea of Kintsugi reminded me of what God does with us. When we give our hearts to him, he takes our broken lives and reforms them into a new creation.
‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come’. (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV)
God continues to work in our lives every day, and as Paul says
‘There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.’ (Philippians 1:6 MSG)
The way we live our lives brings glory to God and points the way to Jesus. His light shines out from us just like those golden seams shine on a Kintsugi pot.
Photographs of a Kintsugi bowl used with permission from the artist. Shirley Fiala DeWitt is an emerging artist from Indiana, USA. She can be found on Instagram @FialaFineArt.
