Last week I had my digital art students create a leaf mosaic using an autumn color scheme. They turned out well. I’m always impressed with the creativity of my students. Mosaics are an art form that goes back for centuries. Artists use small, mundane, irregular pieces of glass, tile, stone, or any colored material to form a larger, more impressive image. My older brother is a mason and a talented craftsman. From time to time he is commissioned to create beautiful tilework or stonework for custom homes. As he works toward the vision in his mind, he chooses each piece based on how its characteristics will fit with the overall creation. As needed, he chips away, cuts, etches, sands, dyes, and fashions a piece to maximize its fit and contribution to the whole design. This process resembles life. You have a collection of experiences which influence who you are and how you live. What do your experiences amount to? God wants to piece together your experiences, especially the broken ones, to create a beautiful masterpiece—a joyful life where you are with God, you are becoming like him, and you are doing what he does to benefit others.
God is always at work saving, healing, and restoring all of creation to his original, marvelous design (Ephesians 1:3-10; Romans 8:18-25). His salvation is needed because everyone has rebelled from God’s design by selfishly living for themselves instead of for him and others (Isaiah 53:6; Romans 3:23). Jesus, God the Son, makes God’s salvation available to all who confess their wrongdoing and receive his forgiveness (John 3:16-18; 1 John 1:9). Those who trust and obey Jesus experience God’s supernatural renewal (2 Corinthians 5:17-21). Despite your past mistakes or your present circumstances, God can make your future the best through Jesus. He weaves a spectacular tapestry from the fragmented threads of your experience. He paints an astonishing composition from the brushstrokes of your brokenness. He redeems difficulty by drawing you closer to himself. Though his amazing love and almighty power, for anyone who loves him, God brings good from the evil of this fallen world, the evil of others, and even the evil you have caused for yourself (Romans 8:28).
Although it is natural to want to avoid difficulty and discomfort, if you follow Jesus you have a higher calling (Luke 9:23-26; John 15:9-17). Life is not found in avoiding hardship, but rather in working through it by God’s grace and power—letting him change the broken to beautiful. Jesus chose to step down from heaven, become a man, suffer for speaking the truth, be ridiculed for doing what’s right, give his innocent life, and rise again to save all who trust him. He did this out of love, even though many people hate or reject him (Romans 5:8; John 10:11-18; Hebrews 12:2). Just as God sustained and exalted Jesus and used him to save the world, he works through the humble brokenness of those who love him to build them up and to bring others into his family (Philippians 2:5-11; John 20:21). God’s grace is sufficient for you and his power is made perfect in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). So don’t view your inabilities or hindering circumstances as insurmountable obstacles. Instead thank God that he will use them to help you comfort, empathize with, and benefit others. Along your journey on earth the easy, broad, well-travelled, self-serving highway slopes down to destruction. But the rocky, narrow, unpopular, uphill path pursuing truth leads to life with God (Matthew 7:7-14). As you follow Jesus any current trouble pays off by forcing you to rely on God, changing you to become like Jesus, and enabling you to reach others who are lost. “We have this treasure [God’s salvation through Jesus] in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body…Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:7-10, 16-18).
Don’t waste difficulty by complaining, growing bitter, wallowing in despair, plotting revenge, or striving to change what is out of your control. Handled properly difficulty can train you to live rightly and abundantly. Entrust it and yourself to God and let him teach you through it. As he does he will guide you, strengthen you, transform your character to become more like Jesus, and draw you closer to himself. Although it is hard, you can have peace in difficulty and joy in trials. Not for the trial itself, but for the results it forges. Allow hardships to move you to the best possible place which is the warm and secure embrace of God. Take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus, submit your concerns to him, and yield your ways to his. As the chief craftsman he will take the broken and otherwise wasted pieces of your life and create in you a new, better, and more beautiful person.
Note: Lauren Daigle sings an uplifting song titled, “Trust in You” which may encourage you as you look to God to transform your broken into his beautiful.