There’s a quote that’s been sitting with me lately:
“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength.” – Vance Havner
I’ve been thinking about that word… broken. If I’m honest, it’s not a word I like. Because broken sounds like: not enough, not whole, not how things were supposed to be.
And yet… when you really look at it, so much of what sustains life comes through something being broken first. Soil has to be torn open before anything can grow. Clouds have to break to release rain. Grain has to be crushed to become bread. And bread itself has to be broken to nourish others.
It made me wonder… What if the very thing we try to hide is the very thing God wants to use?
I also thought about something called Kintsugi. It’s the art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Not glue that hides the cracks. Not something that tries to make it look untouched.
Gold.
The cracks are filled, not covered. Highlighted, not erased. Honored, not hidden. The piece doesn’t go back to what it was before.
It becomes something new. Something more valuable… because of where it was broken.
I think a lot of us live the opposite way. We try to hold everything together. We stay strong. We push through. We keep the cracks hidden where no one can see them. We tell ourselves that if we can just keep it all intact, then we’ll be okay.
But God doesn’t seem to work that way. All throughout Scripture, He draws near to what’s broken.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” – Psalms 34:18
He doesn’t step back from it. He doesn’t wait for it to be fixed. He comes close.
Even Jesus… After the resurrection, He still had His scars. He could have removed them. He didn’t.
They became proof of what He had been through… and what He overcame.
So maybe brokenness isn’t the end of the story. Maybe it’s the place where God begins to work in a deeper way. Maybe the areas we feel weakest in… are the very places He wants to fill with something stronger than us.
Not to shame us. Not to expose us. But to transform what was painful… into something purposeful.
I’m starting to wonder if the goal isn’t to be unbroken. Maybe it’s to be held together by God instead of by our own strength. Maybe it’s trusting that He sees every crack… and isn’t turned away by any of them. Maybe He’s the one gently filling them, piece by piece, with something more beautiful than we could have made on our own.
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Lord,
You see every part of me, even the places I try to hide. The places that feel broken, weak, or not enough.
Help me to trust that You are not afraid of those places. Teach me to bring them to You instead of covering them up. Remind me that You are close to the brokenhearted, not distant from them.
Where I feel cracked, fill me with Your peace. Where I feel weak, strengthen me with Your presence. Where I feel like I have to hold everything together, help me rest in the truth that You are the One holding me.
Take what feels broken in me and use it for something good.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Scriptural Musings with Booferchick 