Shattered

The ordeal of packing and moving things continued for two days. I packed. They moved. Orderly. Uneventful. Then the quiet apology came. "That table with the marble top? The marble broke as we were putting it down in the car."

I felt a twinge in my heart. I have several marble-topped pieces, and each has its own sentimental value, each given by or inherited from a special person. Whichever one, some memory was just shattered.

But the men had been so careful, so meticulous as they worked, and I could not be angry about this accident. I assured them that the marble was just a "thing" and that we would not allow ourselves to fret over a broken thing. So we continued with our work, but as I continued wrapping and packing, my thoughts went back to the broken marble. Broken is broken! No repair restores broken marble. It was gone.

And that's when God began to talk to me. In fact, that is usually when he talks to me most clearly--when I am contemplating something. He has a way of turning my thoughts to something that at first seems totally irrelevant. This time I remembered a t-shirt a friend had been wearing--one of those t-shirts with a message: "Justified! Just as if I never had!" My thoughts moved from the marble to the message, and I began to thank God for the incredible fact that his work in my life through Christ actually allows me to stand before him "justified," sinless through the finished work of Jesus! Sins taken away and buried in the deepest sea! Forgotten because Christ bore them for me on Calvary. Suddenly tears of joy began to fill my eyes! How wonderful to be so sure of my Lord's absolutely perfect work for me and of my position before Almighty God!

But how did I get from broken marble to praising God? Then he showed me. The table would never be the same. Broken is broken! That's the way of "things." And that is also the way of human life. Sometimes life gets broken, too. Sometimes it seems hopelessly shattered, unable to be mended, glued back together!

"Not so," said God to my heart. My friend's t-shirt was absolutely right. When Jesus mends a broken heart, a broken life, the result is just as if the break had never happened! The sin confessed, the hurt forgiven, the disobedience erased restores the life as if the infraction had never occurred! Jesus does not put broken marble back together! He does better! He puts broken lives back together--my own the perfect example!

I may not try to have the marble glued back, keeping the broken seam as a reminder that were it not for Christ's perfect finished work on that cruel, mean cross, I'd be as hopelessly broken as the table! I think I'll cherish the scared table more now than before the break!