Beauty and Brokenness

Yesterday’s BBC’s ‘Songs of Praise’ featured Graham Kendrick’s great song ‘Beauty for Brokenness’ and ‘Kintsugi’ – repairing broken pottery with gold, and making it beautiful…

Beauty and Brokenness: Throughout our lives beauty and brokenness live side by side.

One family we know are devastated by an unexpected death, but are excited by the news of a baby that’s on its way. We know several couples who are foster carers; they see children whose lives are both beautiful and broken.

Life includes the good, the bad and the ugly; it’s Forest Gump’s box of chocolates ‘you never know what you’re going to get’; life’s beauty and brokenness together.

Beauty from Brokenness: It’s great to see brokenness turned into beauty.

I’ve known several addicts turn their lives around; a couple who were in chronic debt have sorted themselves out and are back to financial stability; friends whose walking was painful and slow have been transformed by a hip replacement.

It’s in the miracles and mission of Jesus – literal and metaphorical: the blind see, prisoners are freed, hungry are fed, storms are stilled, brokenness becomes beauty.

Beauty through Brokenness: Sometimes the road to beauty leads us through brokenness.

One couple I know… both have been through painful, messy divorces… coming out the other side… rediscovering love in each other that’s deeper, wiser and richer than they thought possible.

It’s seen in Christian faith… hope is strengthened through despair, victory is achieved through suffering, there can be no resurrection without death, the route to beauty is through brokenness.

Beauty in Brokenness: There’s something in brokenness that is in itself beautiful.

In a ‘disabled’ child – the onlooker may see disability, problems and brokenness; the parent sees character, beauty, part of the family. The man with the degenerative disease – the onlooker may see the wheel-chair, the lack of communication; the family sees the funny, loving dad, the generous, courageous husband…

And Jesus saw prostitutes, lepers, societies broken rejects, as lovely, interesting and beautiful – as  they were!  

Songs of Praise indeed!