Include the Broken Pieces

Kintsugi- is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, silver or platinum

Include the broken pieces. This was part of the instruction as volunteers were putting together our labyrinth. The process of moving bricks brought together people with a common aim- creating a meditative walking path for our community. Include the broken bricks- they are part of the invitation to allow ourselves to acknowledge our own broken places.

The photo of the kintsugi bowl above reflects the Japanese art of putting together broken things with fine metals. The broken pieces come together to make something uniquely beautiful. It is only kintsugi if you Include the broken pieces. God knows about broken hearts.

This song by Gungor has gone through my mind as I have reflected on the broken pieces, the broken places, the broken hearts that are all part of this human life we get to live. I have had a couple of conversations recently in which I am acutely aware that it is from the places of my heartbreak, the there has been more room for God. God is indeed making beautiful things out of us. I hope you’ll listen to that song linked above. Deep connections and relationships are often forged from walking alongside one another in our brokenness. Include the broken pieces.

As I have invited folks to reflect upon the map of their hearts during this month of September, I am hoping to encourage them to be unafraid of brokenness. Include the broken places in your heart in that map. God takes our brokenness, our hurt places, our frailties, and our feelings embracing us in our entirety. This is grace. This is the beauty that is particular to God’s artistry. I trust God wants us to include the broken pieces of our hearts in what we offer up to God.  

This Sunday, September 21, 2025 when we read in worship the challenging parable of the dishonest manager in Luke 16  I will be pointing to these words in which it ends:

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Will you make a map of your heart? Would you let that map be an offering to God? It takes courage to be awake and aware and admit that we have broken places in our hearts. Do your trust that God knows this about us and loves us in our broken places?

The faithfulness to which we are invited is to be fully and completely ourselves- trusting God is the one who has created us and has given us free will to love what we will love. And God will keep pursuing us with God's love to the very end. God risks this, not forcing us to love God but calling to us over and over and again to let God fill our hearts. The true riches of which Jesus speaks cannot be stored in a bank they are a matter of the heart. A few weeks ago we heard the verse from Luke 12:34 For where your treasure is there will your heart be also. 

Our hearts are designed with a God shaped space. Any and every time that we attempt to fill that God shaped space with something else we become beholden to that. That is one part of our brokenness. Another way to speak of this “being beholden” in the Bible is “idolatry”- to love anything or anyone more than God. We will falter and fail in our faithfulness. We let other things take up space that was created for God alone to fill. When we deceive ourselves into thinking that our work or our riches, our family or our appearance, our nationality or our possessions can save us and keep us safe we have filled up space in our hearts. 

Here is that reading from Luke 16 in the Message. Maybe you’ll hear this parable in a just a little different tone in this modern language translation. "You can’t serve both God and the Bank" is the way the last words are translated. Being instructed time and time again, to love God above anything and anyone is the message of our scripture. And to trust that each and every time we falter or fail at it God is right there waiting to use broken pieces is part of this following Jesus journey. We get to keep asking God to help us be unafraid to include what is broken. It is into our broken places that God desires to enter. To restore us and redeem us and reclaim us is the work and purpose of Jesus coming into this human world.

We are invited to be wise stewards of our “stuff” . We get to use what we have been given for good. We are reminded it’s not our goods or our goodness that can ever save us. It is God alone who save. It is grace upon grace upon grace that puts togehter the broken pieces. The saving Jesus has come into this world to share and to show-- is to save us in the here and now from filling that God shaped space in our hearts with anyone or anything other than God. And it’s often in our most broken times and places that we experience this the most fully.