The Parable of the Shattered Baking Dish

This is all I have left of my baking dish -- one small shard that I found a week after I broke it. Actually, I shattered it into thousands of tiny pieces. Originally, it looked a lot like the baking dish pictured below. 

If I had a photographer's mind, I would have taken a picture of the aftermath of the dish's destruction: glass all across the stove, the counters, the floor. However, I was barely able to control my dismay let alone the dog who wanted to see what the explosion was all about. Instead I have a teacher's mind, and I thought: God, there must be a lesson in this. 

Of course, there was an obvious scientific lesson: Don't pour water into a hot dish. I actually knew that lesson, but I had poured a little bit of water and nothing disastrous happened. I had finished baking some squash, taken it out of the pan, and wanted the remains to come up easily. I poured a little water in and all was well. I poured a little more. Everything was lovely. Until it was not. I poured one smidgen of water too much and the dish exploded. I've broken dishes before. This was not just a broken dish. Teeny shards of glass flew everywhere. 

A second obvious lesson was the one where I got away with a little something I knew was wrong so I kept doing it until that awful moment when it caught up with me. However, that wasn't the life changing lesson. 

As I looked at the thousands of broken pieces, I realized no artist no matter how gifted could put my dish together. 

The caption for this artwork reads: "the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken." 

There are times in my life when this caption fits and it's a beautiful reminder. Yet, my heart went to thoughts of time and people where their "dish", their lives, seemed shattered beyond all repair. It made me weep until a series of "random" occurrences caused me to think about how God transforms. He is able to gather thousands upon thousands of broken pieces and make us new. We are still us. If I had gathered up all those pieces and instead of throwing them in the trash, I had melted them all together, all the particles of that dish would still be there. In like fashion, each of our unique DNA is still there. My pieces of shard still had some squash juice on them, and I wonder "Does God clean up every little shard?" That's a lovely thought. Or, does some of that become a part of us so that we in turn can love, comfort, and help others who are broken? 

These latter lessons carry me past weeping into hope. 

This song also came to mind, and I close with "Broken Vessels" by Hillsong.