For those of you who are old enough, do you remember how kids used to search for glass bottles, and the bottling companies would pay them a nickel apiece? Then the bottles would be washed and reused. Later, those companies decided it was cheaper and more convenient to institute a “no deposit-no return” policy. Customers should throw away cans and plastic and glass bottles instead. How sad.

Like discarded bottles, we, too, can be recycled into something fresh and beautiful.
God’s renewed creation.

Also, like glass, the price of renewing a human soul is costly.

Jesus sacrificed beyond what we can understand so we could be made into new and better people.

You can see from the above chart why industry would rather not recycle it. It’s an expensive, complex, and potentially dangerous process. Even so, the glass can be broken, crushed, melted, and reformed into something brand new and beautiful.

So, in my poor analogy, the bottle companies paid a huge price to recycle,
like Jesus paid to recycle us.

But we (the bottles) need to beware! Notice what the bottles had to go through.

Broken? Ow! Sometimes, God has to break us, like a rancher breaks a horse, if we are ever to be obedient.

Crushed? Even worse. Doctors can set bones, but they can do no more than to replace crushed limbs with artificial body parts. Only God can choose to restore a crushed portion of the human anatomy, and no one except God can restore a crushed spirit.

Melted? And reformed? An amazing amount of heat is required to liquefy glass, at which point the glass worker can reshape it–into something plain and useful or into a work of art. God can use the searing heat within HIs power and melt the soul down to its very essence, and when He reshapes it, we may not recognize ourselves when God has put the finishing touches on His renewed creation.

Or He can reform us like the biblical metaphor of the potter and the clay. The Potter forms the lump on the wheel (me) into something beautiful. If He’s not satisfied with His work, He slams me back into a lump and starts over. PAIN.

Will the process be worth it? Oh, yes!

God starts with our brokenness. We find ourselves in a time of life that hurts. Big hurts. Small hurts. We howl in our pain. We want relief. As Christians, we have only one way to find such relief. Tell Jesus. Beg Him for help.

Jesus pulls us onto His lap and lets us babble and wail over every hammer blow to our souls all the way down to every paper cut. He walks alongside us for days, even years, until we have spewed out all the pain, real and imagined. Once we are depleted, Jesus can speak.

He knows we’re ready to listen.

He shares His Word. A whisper. A challenge. He offers possibilities of peace restored to our souls. When we follow His suggestions, we naturally draw closer to Him. We rediscover joy! All of our sobs and whines and tears have melted into a beautiful new color of life, and we find ourselves made into something new.

While Jesus is the Master Artist in creating within us new beauty, He offers us an apprenticeship in His workshop. He teaches us techniques in listening to others’ brokenness and pain. He gives us the endurance to walk for miles with a friend on their journey toward a mended life. He passes on the wisdom of His Word for us to share with those in need, so He can restore their broken souls, too.

Which leads me back to the broken glass analogy. 

Nancy Head wrote a simple poem on brokenness. I share it with her permission.
BROKEN BREAD
We grow from broken toys to broken hearts.
Broken is usually not a happy word.
It means damaged, inadequate, alone.
But broken bread fixes cracked hearts.
It feeds and fills.
Broken bread restores.

As we enter Holy Week on the Church calendar, let us remember: 

Jesus said at the Last Supper as he held the bread, “This is My body broken for you.” HE is the One who fixes broken hearts. HE is the One who restores us and gives us eternal life!

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