Do not remember the former things for behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? Is. 43:18-19
A few years ago, my children were going through a program with the hospice designed to help them cope with loss and grief. The program included having the children create memorials as a way to honor their loved ones and explaining the grief process to them in ways they could understand. One of the activities really spoke to me. The facilitators had the children draw a picture on a ceramic tile. It was colorful and really pretty. Then, they smashed the tile into dozens of small pieces. They used the broken pieces of tile to create a mosaic. The point that the facilitators made to the children is that even though the mosaic was not like the original tile picture, it was still beautiful.
This week my life feels like the ceramic tile. I am not even sure I know where all the little pieces are. That’s O.K., though, because God does. I have seen His hand in so many ways this week. Remember when God sent Jeremiah to the potter’s house? The clay was “marred in the potter’s hand.” Rather than throwing it away, he remade it into something different. God did the same for Israel, and He does the same for us. How many of you are someplace in your life that did not show up on your radar a few years ago? If you had told me a year ago that I would be sitting at my computer today working on my second book, I would have laughed at you. A year ago there was no first book, just a dream and lots of reasons it wouldn’t work. Here I am, though. My family is having growing pains, but at least there is growth. God is orchestrating changes in so many areas I am frankly a little dizzy trying to keep up.
Are you dealing with change and loss as well? Chances are good that you are, because if you are reading this you are probably human. It is tempting to try to remake our lives and glue the picture back together, but maybe we need to give God our broken pieces and let Him remake something. There is an old camp song that says:
Something beautiful, something good.
All my confusion He understood.
All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife
But He made something beautiful of my life
I always thought that the song was talking about salvation. While it is true that God does make something beautiful of our sinful lives when we first meet Him, He also continues to make us more and more beautiful when we are broken. If you are broken, let Him help you see the new thing He is doing. If you love someone who is broken, be there. Point them to the Artist who can give them new beauty.
One final thought—I never noticed until today where the clay was. It was marred in the potter’s hand. What a comfort to know that when the world is spinning so fast and we are being pulled and molded, we are still in His Hand.LORD, help us remember that you are the God who makes all things new.
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