Shards
I want to write about something I think everyone can relate to. Something that isn’t always easy. I’m going to talk about… shards.
Yes, shards. You know that feeling, right? Sometimes your life, you yourself, feels completely broken. Just like a glass that falls and shatters into a thousand pieces. Those are the difficult moments in our lives, the tough times. But it’s precisely those broken pieces, those ‘shards’, that can ultimately become something beautiful. In my life, I’ve experienced how you can actually create a stunning mosaic from those challenging moments.
Shards: Do they bring happiness… or mainly pain?
Well, you know the saying, right? That old proverb: “Broken shards bring luck.” We often say it a bit jokingly when something has fallen and broken. Like, ‘Oh well, doesn’t matter, it brings good luck!’ By the way, that saying used to be taken more seriously. People genuinely believed that by breaking something, you could ward off bad things or spirits. Superstition, I think.
But when you’re talking about the shards in your own life, the shards of sorrow or pain… well, those often don’t feel like luck at all. Just think about the story of Job in the Bible. Job went through terrible things; he lost everything. And in his deepest misery, completely broken, he picked up a piece of broken pottery. And what did he do with it? He started scraping his own wounds.
“And he took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.” Job 2:8 (ESV)
Painful, isn’t it? That’s a powerful image, but it does show what you sometimes do when you’re in a lot of pain: you just keep dwelling on what went wrong, on what hurt you. And by doing that, you actually make it worse. You get stuck in that difficult moment, and that makes it so hard to feel better and move on. Recognizable, perhaps?
But… difficult moments can change you.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to end with that scraping. Those tough times, those broken moments, they can also help you grow. To start something new.
Imagine for a moment… think about stained glass windows. They’re often so incredibly beautiful, aren’t they? If you look closely at one, you see that it’s not one large piece of glass. No, it’s thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of small, colored pieces of glass. And then comes an artist. They take all those small, broken pieces. Very patiently, with great care, they put them together to create a large, dazzling picture. What first seemed like a small, sharp, useless piece becomes part of something truly impressive.
A well-known example is the stained glass windows in St. John’s Church in Gouda. Those windows aren’t just enormous; they also tell stories with all those pieces of glass. They illustrate so well how you can create something breathtakingly beautiful from many small pieces that might not seem special on their own. If you just use those pieces in the right way.
Your ‘shards’… in good hands?
And that’s essentially how it works with our lives too. All those moments that have made you who you are – the moments of sadness, of pain, of falling down… but also the moments of joy, of triumph, of intense color – those are your ‘shards’.
What are you going to do with them? Are you going to, like Job, keep picking at those old wounds, at that pain from the past? Or will you choose to use those moments? To, figuratively speaking, put them in ‘good hands’. What do I mean by that? That you give them a place. That you try to learn from them. And that you move forward with those lessons. That you don’t let that pain, that sorrow, win, but use it as a kind of building block.
All aspects of who you are, all the ‘colors’ of your life – that blue of sadness, the yellow of joy, the dark shades of difficult times, and the bright red of passion or resilience – they are all important. They make you the unique person you are. Just as all the colors in that stained glass window are needed for the complete picture, so all your experiences are needed to tell your unique life story. And you’re not alone in this: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18 (NIV)
Your life… see it as a work of art. A beautiful mosaic that isn’t finished yet. New pieces are constantly being added. New experiences. You don’t know yet what it will look like when it’s completely finished; the ‘canvas’ is still in front of it. But if you believe that you can grow, that you can overcome difficult things, and that those ‘shards’ can find their place… then you can look to the future with a lot of hope.
And you know what I believe? When that ‘canvas’ is removed one day, you won’t just see the pain or the mistakes. No, you’ll see how all those different pieces – yes, even the difficult ones – have together formed something beautiful. Your life will then show how strong you have become. How beauty has grown, precisely from the moments that were once so painful.
So, my question to you: What do you do with your ‘shards’? Do you keep using them to keep old wounds open? Or do you give them a place and let them be used to create something beautiful and strong? The choice… is yours.
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6 1 (ESV)
@wimvanputten
@wimvanputten