Day 9 in the wilderness: Fix what you have broken the right way.

“And the Lord said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. So be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself to Me there on the top of the mountain.”

‭‭Exodus‬ ‭34:1-2‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

There is a legend that goes that a Japanese warrior had broken his favorite bowl and sent it to be repaired. When it came back it was repaired; but it was now very ugly. Not wanting to leave his favorite bowl looking like this, he took it to a craftsman and asked him to make the repairs beautiful. The craftsman came up with a unique technique in which he mixed a resin with gold. When the bowl was repaired it was now more beautiful than before it was broken. This repair technique came to be known as “Kintsugi.” Kintsugi means something like, “golden joining.”

Sometimes children will break something and—in a desperate attempt not to be found out—they will make a very clumsy attempt at repairing the object, making it worse and basically impossible to repair.

Sometimes we break things; and we do it up good. We may look at what we have broken and have shame for what we have done. That shame may lead us to do something drastic, totally rendering what was broken even worse.

Yesterday we talked about the fact that pressure can lead us to break something precious. And, whereas it is much better not to break something, if we do break it, we need to know how to fix it the right way.

“My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

‭‭I John‬ ‭2:1-2‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

In this scripture John is urging us not to sin, but reminding us that when it does happen, when we do mess things up, we have Someone who is able and willing to help us make it right again.

Now, what does all this have to do with Kintsugi? Well, when we try to fix what we’ve broken, it’s like the first attempt at fixing the bowl in the legend: you may get it back together; but it will never be beautiful. However, if we repent to the Lord and ask Him to help us, He will! You see, it’s like our repentance is the gold and His forgiveness is the resin, that coming together, make a beautiful “repair.”

Yesterday we found Moses breaking the tablets of The Law. His moment of anger and frustration ended with tablets of stone, personally hewn by the Lord and written by His hand, being destroyed.

However, today we see that the Lord is giving Moses a way to participate in making what was wrong, right again. Now Moses would go and cut new tablets of stone on which the Lord would again write His Law.

“At that time the Lord said to me, ‘Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain and make yourself an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and you shall put them in the ark.’ “So I made an ark of acacia wood, hewed two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain, having the two tablets in my hand. And He wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken to you in the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me.”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭10:1-4‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

So we see the miracle of repentance, being combined with the mercy of the Lord, producing something beautiful.

You may feel that you have broken something; you’ve messed something up; and indeed, you may have. Take it now, take it immediately, to the Lord. Repent before Him and allow Him to put the glue of His mercy together with the gold of your repentance, making what was broken, into something beautiful.

For today write this in your “wilderness journal”:

Fix what you have broken the right way.

#40daysinthewilderness