Isaiah 48:10 Behold, I have refined
thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.
Kintsugi ("golden joinery")
or kintsukuroi ("golden repair") is the centuries-old Japanese art of
fixing broken pottery with gold, silver, or platinum. The ideal behind it is
that the fixed object is even more beautiful then it originally was before it
was damaged.
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| “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). |
None of us go through
life without facing trials. Everyone goes through them and none of us have or
will ever receive a free ride through this life without going through some.
Life is not easy and nor is it fair and all of us will go through our share of
times were we wish we could skip ahead of the story to the “good parts” that
lie ahead. Trials will come and they will range anywhere from the occasional shift
in our lives that put us out of our comfort zone to outright the most heart
shattering times of our lives we would not wish on anyone else.
None of us want or like
having trials hit us because they show us how vulnerable we are, they flush out
our weaknesses, they hurt and that hurt can be the deepest of agony. Trials always
seem to come in huge waves, one right after another with little respite in-between
until we are beat down and burned out. It is during these times of our lives
that end up breaking us, sometimes it is physically, sometimes it is
emotionally or mentally, sometimes trails break us down spiritually, and then
more often than not, they seem to break us in every which way.
The beauty of life
however is that we are not meant to come out the other side of our trials still
broken, wounded and worse off than before. It does not matter what brought on
the trial in the first place, but what matters is that you know that whatever
you may face in this life isn’t meant to be a punishment but a time for God
Himself to refine us through His “refiner’s fire”. He
is taking us and making into something new, more pure, He is molding us into
something better. Sometimes while we go through these fires we can crack and
need repair and that it is ok as long as we are willing to be repaired. When we
endure the fires of change and refinement we can come out better, more
beautiful and sometimes unrecognizable, even to ourselves and that is why the
Atonement is so important during these times.
This is why I like the
Japanese art of Kintsugi, it reminds me of what the Atonement of Jesus Christ
can do for us during the hard times. This centuries old practice is based on
the premise that you take something beautiful that has been broken, something
flawed, and repair it but not to its original state, but into something better.
As a philosophy, it treats the breakage and its repair as part of the history
of an object, rather than something to disguise. The following quote by Korean
artist Yee Sookyung drives this point home when he said:
“The master potter was trying to
create the perfect piece each time, and he would discard even the ones with the
slightest flaw. So I chose to create new forms from them, because perhaps, I
don’t believe completely in that kind of perfection.
“To me, a piece of broken ceramic
finds another piece, and they come to rely on one another. The cracks between
them symbolise the wound. The work is a metaphor of the struggle of life that
makes people more mature and beautiful as they overcome their sufferings.”
We always have been and
always will be in the hands of the master potter Jesus Christ and he will
always work on us to remove our flaws and imperfections and take the pieces
left and make us into something even more beautiful then we once was before.
This happens throughout our whole lives and it isn’t always pleasant, but it is
needed and always worth it if we allow it and Him to mold us into His vision
for us instead of allowing it to harm and scar us. Even if we have been scared,
He can and will heal those scares if you allow Him, we are meant to be so much
more then we currently are or once was. Let the Atonement make you whole again.
