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Not long ago
, I found myself staring at the remnants of a beautiful jar
that I had cherished. This was a very special 5 gallon Mason Jar with
an Eagle on one side and the Bi-Centennial insignia and year
information on the other. My dad had bought it for me in 1976. As I said it meant a
lot to me since my Dad went home to be with Jesus in 1988. When I
would pass by this Jar of Remembrance in the room where it resided, it would
make a feeling of warmth flow through me, remembering the love my Dad
and I had for each other.
In the last few years, the new State Quarters started coming out, so
my husband and I decided to collect them. We needed a place to keep them,
Yep! You guessed it. The quarters found their way into the prized jar
along with other coins. A large collection began to accumulate, so
eventually we needed to empty the contents and eliminate some of the
coins, so we got the jar out and started rolling the coins.
Now the jar was still quite heavy even though we had taken a lot of coins out of
it, so my husband was going to pour the coins from the jar onto the dining
room table where we could finish rolling the coins, when something
happened and he dropped the jar, shattering it into a zillion,
splintery looking pieces, leaving only the bottom with some jagged, sharp peaks
sticking up. I was left staring in unbelief. For some reason, I
remained dry eyed over the prized possession, unable to say a word. I knew it
was an accident, I also knew money couldn’t have purchased the old jar,
so somehow I perceived that there was a lesson to be learned in all
this.
We placed the remnants of the prized jar in a cardboard box to await
the trash pick-up and each time I passed by those fragments of what used to
be something beautiful and cherished, I couldn’t help but compare it to
some of the human “Broken Lives’ I have encountered in my years of
Ministry.
My thoughts immediately went to a young man who was in my
Sunday School class 17 years ago, who is currently serving a prison
sentence. I am sure he wouldn’t mind me mentioning his story as his
life in prison now belongs to God and he writes freely of his love for
his Savior and how he wishes he could turn back the years to those days
when life was simple and his biggest concern was going to High School
and being a truck driver like his dad one day. I am very encouraged
when I read his letters and realize how he has allowed the Lord to embrace
him and turn him around and take the broken pieces of his life and put
them back together again.
There are so many other people whose lives are like the broken jar,
broken into many pieces with very little hope of ever being put
together again unless they are willing to turn their lives over to God.
There are many people the Bible talks about whose lives were broken.
Mary Magdelene was one who was possessed by demons and broken, but
because of the Master, was at the tomb on Resurrection morning and what
a testimony she had of the “Risen, Living Jesus”.
The woman with the “Issue of Blood” in Mark 5:25 was broken but she
recognized the need for a change in her life. She has spent all the
money she had, and had suffered many things at the hands of the
physicians of that day, which compared with today was probably a form
of torture with very little medication to ease the pain. The sad thing was
until the day she met Jesus she was not better, she was worse. In
Verse 28 she made this statement “If I may touch His clothes, I shall be
whole”. There was not a trace of doubt in her mind, If I can just get
close enough to touch His clothes, I will be made whole, not “Maybe”
but “I Will”.
John 12:24 – Except a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it
abideth alone.
Generally speaking, there is no comparison to be made between the value
of a diamond & that of a grain of corn, yet it all depends on the
disposition you make of the corn. Put both of them away & at the end of
100 years, the grain of corn will still have no money value, while the
diamond’s value, running up into the hundreds of dollars will be
undiminished. At the end of 1000 yr. the same thing will be true. But
suppose, instead, we bury the grain in the warm, moist earth & year
after year throughout the centuries let it go on producing &
reproducing. In that time it will have produced a store that the whole
earth could hardly contain. Its reproduction represents a money value
that makes the diamond’s price not more than an atom in comparison. To
have saved the grain of corn would have been to lose all it was capable
of producing.
God uses “Broken Things”. For instance, just think, it takes “Broken
soil to produce a crop”, “Broken clouds to produce rain”, “Broken grain
to give bread and produce bread to give strength”, “It is the broken
Alabaster box that gives forth perfume”. “It is the broken Peter,
weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever”.
“Brokenness brings wholeness”. “Brokenness empowers”. Brokenness helps
us to identify with others. Some things are ruined as my jar was when
broken, but the heart that God will use, is at it’s best when broken.
Jesus is ready to take your brokenness and make you whole, He stands at
the door awaiting your knock.
(Rev.3 :20) “Behold I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my
voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him,
and he with me.
Psalm 37:5 - “Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in Him: and He
shall bring it to pass
Just as the Potter molds the clay and shapes it until it is perfected,
so does the Father desire to take our broken lives and shape them into
something usable, something to be desired. He longs to use us as
vessels He can work through and win others to His Kingdom.
It is so wonderful to be a part of the Family of God and to have our
lives shaped by the Master who can take the worst broken piece and
sculpture a Masterpiece from it. Let us pray that God will use us.
Let us pray with wet eyes, bent knee and broken hearts
Copyright 2001 by Betty Lester
