Each of us carries baggage from our individual pasts. That stuff we would like to forget, and wish we had done differently. Often our baggage has produced chips and cracks, scars in our being. We’d like to relive our lives, making different choices. We’d like not to have those scars. That is one thing technology cannot give us. To live and to love means we are wounded. Our scars can give us wisdom and compassion and beauty. In today’s world, we throw away the cracked and chipped and buy new. Repair is not even considered.
In Japan, artists mend the most valuable pieces of pottery with a mixture of gold dust mixed with resin. The artist’s goal is to use the brokenness to add something new and beautiful. The process is called Kintsugi.
For me God is like the Kintsugi artist. We are all God’s most precious children. God has promised never to abandon us. God offers us the gold of forgiveness mixed in with the resin of love. Those beautiful golden lines in our hearts tell the stories of our lives. They make us unique, for we are a product of the ultimate artist. We don’t have to throw out our past, leave behind the baggage. We can give our past to God. When healed by God’s loving forgiveness, our scars can shine with the glitter, the beauty of gold, making us even more valuable.
I have experienced this as truth. The wounds of life have certainly left scars on my being. God’s healing has turned those scars into blessings so that they shine through my writing, my speaking, my loving. Accepting God’s forgiveness for past actions has made it possible to love and value who I am today, and who I will become.
I recommend you give it a try. Offer your baggage, your wounds to God. Rest in God’s free and loving forgiveness. Enjoy the peace, beauty and wisdom of scars and chips mended by God.
“The steadfast love of our God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning,” (Lam 3: 24?)
