GOD FIXES BROKEN THINGS

There was once a prophet whom God showed something about how he works in our lives.  He sent him to look at a potter working on a piece of clay.  The Lord gave another message to Jeremiah. He said, “Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.” So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel. But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over.(Jeremiah 18:1-4). There are so many interesting aspects to this short analogy and I was drawn to it because it relates to many of our own journeys.  We accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior and claim for ourselves the truths of all the scriptures which promise protection, hope and a bright future.  We trust Him with all of our lives.  We worship and serve in His house.  His work in our lives is obvious as we are being transformed from glory to glory. But in the midst of this transcendent experience and while in the very center of the palm of the Lord's hand we experience a spirit-crushing event.  

A dear friend of mine recently lost her husband of 27 years to a car accident.  He was simply driving home from Lowes and never made it back to her.  They had overcome several challenges in their marriage through prayer and the help of the Holy Spirit. As a pastor's kid, serving in ministry was always a priority and together they were finally in a good place.  Listening to her tell the story, you can feel the broken bones of her spirit which were crushed on that day.  On a more personal note I think about my own first marriage which ended before it even began.  On paper we were a model church couple but a separation after four trying years and an eventual divorce can only be described as the very earth under my feet giving way.  I was crushed.  

Being crushed is beyond disappointment, it feels like a complete decimation of your life, hopes, dreams, expectations. It will generally destroy your ability to envision a future for your life.  All the broken parts of your life lay everywhere.  Christians struggle as profoundly with understanding the wasteland which becomes their life after a crushing experience.  There is room for a lot of resentment and cynicism towards the Lord.  “How and why could the Lord allow this to happen to me?” We are not insulated from difficult circumstances that can literally break our spirit and challenge our faith.  Quite frankly, the hard truth is that every time, the Lord allows the disappointment, the sickness, the divorce, the death, He is the potter in the analogy and we are the clay. 

Just like the scene that Jeremiah witnessed, we like the clay are sometimes crushed in the hands of the potter. The good news is that the potter, after crushing the clay back into a lump of clay, began again. He started all over.  He had another plan, one that would make a better version of the original.  I can personally attest that the Almighty Potter does make us over again. I believe for my friend that He will do the same for her.  When you find yourself in the hands of the potter being crushed, don't despair. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed. (Psalm 34:18) and just like the potter in the Jeremiah story, the Lord will start over again. 

~Nicholine Charles