Beauty in the Unacceptable

What is it?

What do you so deeply want resolved but remains broken?

What is not as it should be?

Lack of peace and harmony in your marriage? Infertility? Chronic Illness? Job loss? Divorce? Infidelity? Your physical living situation?

What do you so deeply want resolved but it remains broken?

What are you stomping your foot at God and saying, “You could change this in a blink!”

It feels unacceptable, it shouldn’t be this way.

Our society does not value brokenness.  If something or someone does not perform as we hope, we throw it out.  But God values brokenness.  In His eyes, it could be the loveliest and valued place God has for you.  He yearns for us to recognize and surrender our brokenness to Him.  He longs for our weakness to be joined to His love for us.  This is where and how He repairs and restores us.  And this is where He reveals His power, His strength and His glory.

There is a Japanese art called “Kintsugi” This form of art mends broken pottery with a very strong lacquer and then dusts it with gold.  Not hiding but enhancing the broken lines.   This brings more beauty and value to the pottery piece than its original state.  Sometimes the broken space iluminating the gold becomes the focal point of the pottery.

Can you imagine that?  The brokenness in your life becoming beautiful, even more beautiful than your success stories, your mighty victories?

And so it is with our brokenness as we recognize our weakness to fix or change the unacceptable.  God’s love, His grace is enough to mend our spirits, our broken hearts and display His strength and His beauty to us and the world around us. 

“……there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. “  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me…..For when I am weak, then I am strong.” II Corinthians 12:7-10

These unacceptable things are a place to trust and rest in God’s truth, especially when we cannot make sense of it all.  His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.  There is much we will not comprehend in this world.  We are short sighted compared to our God, the creator of it all.  Isaiah 55:8-13  But as Elizabeth Elliot said, “There is peace in surrender.”  And as God’s Word says, there is beauty in joining our suffering, our disappointments and our brokenness with His love.  And He receives the glory.  Much like we did at the cross for our salvation and we received new life.   Only The Holy Spirit could help us discover this beauty in the ugliness of The Cross.

May we come with the same attitude of surrender in our everyday circumstances as we did at the cross for salvation.  And May The Holy Spirit fill us and teach us with the same lasting peace, even when we don’t understand it all.

“Father, help us see the beauty in the unacceptable.  And help us trust you when we don’t understand.” 

Lynn Jackson

Thrive Leadership Foundation