When God Whispers Through Broken Things

Title: When God Whispers Through Broken Things

Intro: God whispers through broken things, through cracks in our hearts where hurt and hope meet.

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:7

Reflection

Dear Friends,

One of my friends, David, shared yesterday that he stood in his garage last Tuesday, sorting through boxes he had meant to unpack two years ago, when he found it—a ceramic bowl his grandmother made, cracked clean down the middle. He held the two pieces in his hands, remembering how she would serve him soup in it every Sunday after church, how her kitchen always smelled like bread and grace. The crack felt like a metaphor for everything he had been carrying lately: the argument with his son that left words hanging in the air like smoke, the news from his sister about her marriage falling apart, and the way his own heart feels some mornings when he wakes up wondering if he is doing any of this right. He almost threw the bowl away. But something stopped him. Maybe it was the memory of his grandmother’s hands, worn and beautiful, shaping clay into something useful. Maybe it was God, whispering through the broken thing in his palms.

In 2 Corinthians 4:7, Paul writes, “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Jars of clay. Breakable, fragile, ordinary. That is us, isn’t it? We crack under pressure. We chip when life gets rough. We are not made of steel or stone, but earth and dust, just like Adam in the beginning. I think about Stella’s daughter Anna, who came to me last week with tears streaming down her face because she did not make the team. She felt broken and unworthy, like all her practice and hope had shattered on the gym floor. I held her and thought about how God holds us when we feel that way—gently, knowing we are fragile, loving us anyway.

My dad used to say that God does not waste anything, not even our pain. He would tell me stories about his own father, my grandfather, who lost everything in the Depression—farm, savings, pride. But somehow, in that emptiness, he found faith. He would gather the family every night to pray, not fancy prayers, just honest ones. “God, we are hungry. We are scared. Help us see tomorrow.” And they did see tomorrow, one day at a time, held together not by what they had but by Whom they trusted. That is the treasure Paul talks about—not our strength, but God’s power working through our weakness. When we are cracked open, that is when the light gets in.

I have been thinking a lot about Psalm 34:18, which says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Close. Not distant, not waiting for us to fix ourselves first, but close. My friend Rachel buried her mom six months ago. She told me that in the weeks after the funeral, when everyone stopped calling and the casseroles stopped coming, that is when she felt God most. Not in big, dramatic ways, but in small ones—a cardinal at the window every morning, her mom’s favourite bird. A song on the radio that made her cry and smile at the same time. A text from a stranger at church who said, “I am praying for you today.” God whispers through broken things, through cracks in our hearts where hurt and hope meet.

But here is what gets me about broken things—they tell a story. That bowl in David’s garage is not worthless because it is cracked. If anything, it is more precious now because he remembers how it broke. He was twelve, washing dishes after watching a movie, daydreaming instead of paying attention, and it slipped from his soapy hands. He thought his grandmother would be furious, but she picked up the pieces, smiled, and said, “Sweetheart, we are all a little broken. It is how the love leaks out.” She kept those pieces in a drawer for years. He never understood why until now. She was teaching him something about grace, about how God does not discard us when we crack.

In Isaiah 61:1, Jesus reads these words in the synagogue: “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” Bind up. Not throw away, not replace, but heal, restore, make whole again. The Japanese have this art called kintsugi, where they repair broken pottery with gold. The cracks become part of the beauty, highlighted instead of hidden. That is what God does with us. He takes our broken places—the divorce, the addiction, the failure, the grief—and fills them with grace. Our cracks become part of our testimony, proof that we have survived, that we have been touched by the hands of a healing God.