Just A Few Thoughts About Trials and Refinement

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.

“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.