God uses our brokenness for His glory
Kintsugi, literally “joining with gold,” is a centuries-old Japanese technique of fixing broken ceramics. When a piece of pottery breaks, the pieces are put together, not with invisible glue so no one sees the flaws, but rather with gold lacquer so that the fracture is obvious. These repaired pieces take on a unique beauty because they have been broken. The philosophy behind kintsugi honors brokenness that, when fully restored, becomes a work of art. There is no shame in the scars.
Like kintsugi pottery, God chooses to use our scars for his glory and ultimately our good. We may not understand why circumstances break into our lives that cause us to shatter, but God is not obligated to tell us why. God asked Job, “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it” (Job 40:2). If anyone had shot at a gripe against God, it was probably Job, yet God allowed him to lose everything. By the end of the text, Job had repented of thinking God owed him an explanation and then prayed for the friends whose words of advice were dreadfully misplaced.
While the stories of broken men in the Bible who were used by God are abundant (think David who broke every commandment and was still “the man after God’s own heart, or Moses, who ran away after committing murder and then returned to rescue the whole nation of Israel), it’s the stories of the women that stand out to me. Given that I happen to be a woman is part of the logic, but there’s also something in these women that makes their brokenness more severe. Women, for most of human history, have been second-class citizens, considered property, and generally disregarded by the powers that be. For God to elevate women is one kind of amazing grace, but elevating broken women is grace beyond comprehension.
Mary of Magdala is arguably the most famous broken woman in the New Testament. She first appears in Luke 8 as one of the women who followed Jesus closely and supported him “out of their possessions.” Mark noted that Jesus had cast seven demons out of her and Luke added that she was one of the women who supported him “out of their means” (Luke 8:3). There is no mention of a husband nor how she acquired her wealth, but she is mentioned so often by name that she was likely one of Jesus’s closer disciples, perhaps a friend as well as a student.
Mary was healed of demon possession, but the scars left by them were not expunged from her memory. She was present at the crucifixion. She had watched as the men put his body in the tomb. She walked to the tomb with Jesus’s mother and other women on the first day of the week to administer traditional burial practices (Luke 24). When they realized the tomb was empty, she was among those who ran to Peter and John to tell them (John 20) and then she returned to the tomb, weeping. It was she who spoke with angels in the tomb and it was she who was first to see the risen Lord (John 20). She didn’t immediately recognize Jesus, perhaps in part because her old fears returned when he died. He had protected her heart and mind for the years she followed him; what would happen to her without him? “Please, sir,” she sobbed. “Do you know where they have taken him?” When Jesus spoke her name, she knew. She spoke the first words to the risen Lord.
Well before the Great Commission (Matthew 28), Jesus said to Mary, “Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,” making her the first missionary of the New Covenant (John 20, ESV). Broken by sin, redeemed by Jesus, and made beautiful through her scars, Mary stands as an example of God using the beautifully broken to accomplish his work.
God used broken women under the Old Covenant as well. Esther surely felt broken. Orphaned and then raised by a cousin, she found herself in an unwelcome competition to be a Persian queen. Her Jewish heritage had rules about physical relationships and guidelines about what made someone unclean, but when the powers of the era took her from her home, she had to acquiesce to decidedly un-Jewish practices from baths to food to finally, a violation of her purity by the king. Orphaned, stolen, and alone, Esther was broken, not by demons, but by her culture. Yet God used her to save the Jews from genocide, not in spite of being broken, but because of it.
Other broken women in the Bible played significant roles in generating nations: Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel were all broken by infertility, yet they are the mothers of the Israelites and direct ancestresses to modern Jews. Hannah, too, was scarred by barrenness who was given a child by the Lord. She didn’t raise her son past toddlerhood because she had promised him to God’s service. A”sinful woman” broke an alabaster flask and anointed Jesus’s feet (Luke 7). The Samaritan and Canaanite women found forgiveness in Jesus, but their burdens of ethnic prejudice were not eliminated (John 4, Matthew 15). We study and honor these women because of their faith, the ribbons of gold binding their broken hearts.
We are all broken in unique ways. Just as the repaired pottery of Kintsugi creates art from broken things, so too, God restores us to do whatever it is He has set out for us. Whether we are broken physically, mentally, emotionally, or circumstantially, God repairs us with the gold of the gospel and grants us grace to fulfill the high and holy calling He has for each of us.
Reflect:
- How might your brokenness situate you to uniquely serve God and His people?
- What have you learned about God’s grace in your brokenness?
Dig a little deeper:
- Read the stories of Tamar (Genesis 38), Ruth and Naomi (Ruth), and Rahab (Joshua 2)
- Compare these women to the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. How did God use these broken women for his glory?
- How might God use you, with all your gold-filled cracks, for your good and His glory?
REFERENCES
Kintsugi: The Healing Power of Pottery Repair | August 2020 | Highlighting Japan
Kintsugi: The Centuries-Old Art of Repairing Broken Pottery with Gold
Kintsugi: the art of precious scars – LifeGate
English Standard Version Bible (2008) Crossway Bibles
Defaulting to Grace 