Kintsugi as an analogy of God's grace.

This plate is an example of what one may try to be when people are watching: perfect, pure, clean and having the appearance that everything in order.

But I feel like this this plate is more realistic depiction of how we actually are or can sometimes feel on the inside: broken from the challenges of life, just trying to hold it together to get through the day.

Here's where the analogy starts: Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. At the end of the process you have a piece of art work that is more beautiful than it was before it was broken, because it was broken.

Below is epoxy mixed with gold dust. It symbolizes God's grace. I like to think if it as an infinite, all encompassing, life changing mix of forgiveness and love.

God's grace doesn't make us perfect but it does set us free. Free from what you ask? From guilt, from shame and embarrassment, from thinking that we are not good enough, from thinking that we need to be something we're not, from societal standards, from hurt and anger, from bitterness and hopelessness, from sin. God's grace gives us a right lens through which to to see ourselves and an example of the way we should treat others.

So like this plate I am glad to have been both broken and a recipient of God's grace. I can remember that the struggles I have been through, that God has brought me through, as beautiful marks that built me into the person I was always meant to be.