Broken But Restored

I love the symphony. I mean I really love the symphony! I believe everyone has at least one thing that fills them to the brim with pure joy. I had one friend that described her nature hikes this way. She just loved nature! She would always say how much nature "fills" her. Well, the symphony is what fills me. It is guaranteed chills up and down my spine. I love to hear the orchestra warm up, I'm mesmerized by the fervor of the conductor, the passion on the performer's faces, the rise and fall of such unique sounds. But what leaves me dumbstruck more than anything is how any one human being, a composer, can take all those notes and know how to put them all together to make one glorious, melodious sound. It amazes me! How can anyone take so many smaller parts and make them into a beautiful whole? Wow!

Art doesn't start out beautiful though. Regardless of the type of art, it starts out as a mere thought or concept. From there it progresses through many different phases before it actually reaches it's final stages of beauty. As a graphic designer I can speak from experience that the "process" of art is often long and tedious and sometimes even painful. But necessary. As much as I'd like, I've never been able to avoid the process. I can't get the thought out of my head and directly onto paper as a finished piece of work without some huge amounts of effort in between. It's the process that makes art become beautiful.

Our lives are like art. We are all somewhere in the process of becoming something beautiful. In fact, the Bible says, "We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." (Isaiah 64:8)

Each one of us are broken pieces of clay. Merely cracked and dried pieces of mud. But before we can become beautiful we have to be shaped. We have to yield to the potter's hand. More importantly, we have to be put through the fire before we can become beautiful. In fact, it's the fire that gives us our beauty.

Wikipedia says that "pottery is made by forming a clay body into objects of a required shape and heating them to high temperatures in a kiln to induce reactions that lead to permanent changes, including increasing their strength and hardening and setting their shape." It goes on to say that, "it is only after firing that the article can be called pottery."

I find that interesting that it can't even be called pottery until it's been through the fire. So until that point it's still just a lump of clay. It's in the process of applying heat that the pottery is strengthened ...leading to permanent changes. Wow! That's pretty cool...or should I say hot?

There's been a lot of "heat" in my life. I could view the heat as unnecessary or annoying. I won't lie...I don't like the heat. But God is teaching me to appreciate it. The heat is necessary. He took my broken pieces and is in the process of restoring me into something beautiful and purposeful. The heat shapes me and strengthens me. In the end, I will be a vessel from which His living water will flow. Although heat is not pleasant...it seems to me it's worth it.