Kintsugi
by Allison Carr (Family Life Associate)
A while ago, I had posted on Instagram about a purchase my mother made as a bridal shower gift for a family friend. After scrolling through their registry, she decided on two beautiful casseroles dishes to help start the newly engaged couples’ kitchen collection. After a few weeks of waiting for the dishes to arrive so that they could be wrapped, the package finally arrived.
It didn’t take long for my mom to realize something had gone awry. Under the assumption something breakable would come in a box, she was surprised to find a meer padded envelope. As she moved the “fragile’ marked padded package inside, she was met by clinking and shifting from within the package, no surprise. The beautiful dishes we in pieces. This poor package had been through the wringer, but why glassware was packaged solely in a padded envelope…we will never know.
Our lives, apart from Christ are a lot like the dishes that arrived at my mom’s house…broken. As we began discussing this new ministry endeavor at Trinity specifically targeted towards women that we now call, “The Well,” you might assume that water was something I was thinking about a lot. You would be right, but I also keep coming back to the large, clay vessels women would carry distances in biblical times to fill up with water that would then be used to help sustain their families with clean water.
In a devotional passage from, “Open Up Your Heart, “ the writer expands on this illustration that we are the clay in our potter’s hands. He says, “The shaping process is hard and long. Trials come to shape us. Our faith is stretched and tested. But in all the stretching, pulling, and shaping his one design is to make us into a vessel He can use for His glory.”
But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8
As a woman and as a mom, I just want God to continue to shape and form me into a vessel to be filled up with His love and spirit so that I might be able to bring hope and love to others through Him. And like the dishes that arrived at my mother’s house, as vessels, we are broken. Not only do I like to image God as our master potter, but perhaps His wheelhouse is in Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottering using gold or silver with the understanding that the piece is not only repaired but made more beautiful. I like to think of myself as a piece of pottery intricately formed at the hands of my Father God. But a world riddled with sin has left cracks, scars, and brokeness. But the master restorer, Jesus, was sent to breathe new life and make all that was broken new. I pray you can find a moment each day to be poured into and be filled up. Be reminded that you are a beautiful masterpiece in hands of your potter and Jesus is our restoration, making us whole and new!