Mosaics & Tough Questions

To my reader,

Today someone asked a question I hear often. 

“Why do bad things happen to good people?”

It pulls at my heartstrings every time I hear it.  You see, this question is more than often asked by people who have tears in their eyes.  The stories these people share would make a Stephen King novel look like a children’s book.

It tells me that people are hurting.

It tells me that people are in pain.

It tells me that people are broken.

I think if we are all honest, we all have been broken.  We’ve all had moments where we feel like a broken pot.  Our hearts feel as pieces of tile do when a sledge hammer breaks into the pavement as though it were target practice.  What’s harder still is when we try to pick up our brokenness from the dust, it often slips out of grip and back into the hard pavement. 

From our deepest pain we cry out, “What good can come from this, God?”

In the Old Testament there is a passage that reads,

“God has made everything beautiful for its own time.” Ecclesiastes 3:11, NLT.

When we think about what use a broken pot can give we find that its pretty useless.  It will never retain water like it used to.  It can’t handle the weight of a plant and soil.  The pot can’t do its old job.

In fact, the pot will never go back to how it used to be.

Its no longer a pot at this moment; its simply broken. 

Even if you are broken, God cares about you.  He loves you more than you can know.  A psalmist wrote “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Psalm 34:17-18, NLT.  He isn’t just a distant God, but in our brokenness, he is with us.  He is close to our broken hearts despite our brokenness. 

This is because our God is an artist.

Some of my favorite pieces of art are mosaics.  They are beautiful creative works that require some amazing skill set that I do no posses.  However, what I love most about mosaics are that they require broken pieces of clay to make beautiful art.

I do not always have an answer for why something is happening other than this, that even in your brokenness God wants to use you in the mosaic of his kingdom.  You are a piece of a beautiful work of art that without is missing an important and vital piece. 

But its in our brokenness we can become a part of this art. 

Turn your broken pieces of your heart to Jesus.  Once you do, you’ll find him waiting and willing to use you in his mosaic of love, grace, and forgiveness.  Don’t try to hold onto the pieces, let them go and see the beauty that the artist can create from your brokenness in this world.

Simply,

Tex G.M. Rule

“God has made everything beautiful for its own time.” Ecclesiastes 3:11, NLT.