Kintsugi Pottery Recreates New Beauty (Jeremiah 15-21)
Beauty from ashes is often the dream of those who are shattered. The art of Kintsugi pottery brings about new life, purpose, and beauty to what others deem as dumpster worthy.
When we walk through trials, it helps a considerable amount to start with a basis of understanding God’s sovereignty and holiness because we know that He can make beauty from our ashes.
After we find ourselves lying in broken pieces, it is God who can mold us together through a refiner’s fire to recreate a new kind of beauty.
It’s never too late to start!
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Beauty from ashes is often the dream of those who are shattered. The art of Kintsugi pottery brings about new life, purpose, and beauty to what others deem as dumpster worthy.
When we walk through trials, it helps a considerable amount to start with a basis of understanding God’s sovereignty and holiness because we know that He can make beauty from our ashes.
After we find ourselves lying in broken pieces, it is God who can mold us together through a refiner’s fire to recreate a new kind of beauty.
It’s never too late to start!
Download your first two weeks free by signing up below (or buy Book One of the Family Bible Plan)!
The Potter...
What does it mean that God is the potter and we are the clay? First and foremost, He is our Creator. Look back to Jeremiah’s calling as a prophet. God knew and created him specifically with the giftings and talents for him to carry out the ministry.
God designed each of us. Your life was created by THE Creator Himself. How amazing is that to consider. Every fiber of your being was part of His plan for you.
This is an amazing gift whether we realize it or not. This ought to be motivating enough to obey Him… His sovereignty over our eye color, thickness of our hair, height, etc. can serve as daily reminders that we can never grasp how sovereign God is, and THAT is the God we serve!
Molding pottery...
In Jeremiah 18, God sends Jeremiah to watch a man make pottery. He formed the clay, it wasn’t looking how the potter wanted, so he refashioned it into a different type of pot.
He designed the pot as he saw fit to how the clay reacted to molding.
What an illustration of our own lives. We have choices in this life, and how we react to molding and refining by God is left in His discretion for how we will be shaped.
Will we repent when God intends to mold us? Or will we harden our hearts?
Will you listen...
God sent a prophet to tell the people of Israel to stop, repent, and turn away from their sins.
Their reply was essentially, “meh, we’ll keep doing what we’re doing and see what really happens.”
To be so cavalier about God is, in itself, a sin. Our lives need to be FOR GOD in every area, not just a passive ‘sure’, or ‘close enough’.
Every so often, it is helpful to remember there are three types of people in this world (Christians, “Christians”, and non-Christians)… only ONE will go to Heaven. Which one are you?
Are you a cavalier Christian trying to squeeze into Heaven without truly living for God? You cannot mock God by living this way, He sees and knows everything! A bigger understanding of His sovereignty will hinder this line of thinking for a believer.
Wickedness abounds...
One chapter over and we find God sends Jeremiah to Potsherd Gate with a newly purchased clay pot.
The Potsherd Gate overlooked the main dump for broken pottery. When pottery breaks or cracks, it is not useful so it is tossed away.
Far worse than a dump, it was also the Valley in which people performed rituals and actually sacrificed their children to pagan gods. We can look at our world today and see the brokenness all around, that sin has so pervaded people’s lives that they take such a loose view of the very lives God created.
Child trafficking is one of those same travesties that wicked men (as in, humankind) have perpetuated. It has risen to levels never before known. But we see here, that form of wickedness is not new; the same sinful attitude was pervasive all throughout the Old Testament as well.
God sends Jeremiah there with a message of complete destruction for their lack of repentance and their sold out mentality for wickedness.
The Valley would be known as the Valley of Slaughter as part of the consequences for their actions.
Broken Pottery...
God gave a visual for the people of Israel along with a fierce message of condemnation.
The result? Jeremiah was beaten and put in jail.
So we must turn this to ourselves and ask, would we respond with stiff necks and harden our heart against a challenge to live for God?
God had Jeremiah destroy that piece of pottery as a symbol to the people of what He can do. But His plan isn’t to leave Israel completely desolate… He knows and already shared that a small remnant would survive and be made whole again.
The strength of gold...
Kintsugi is the Japanese broken pottery repair method using gold.
They repair broken pottery by using gold, silver, or platinum to fill in the cracks. The broken pottery remains useful, takes on an entirely new look, and has it’s own delicate beauty attached to it now.
What a beautiful picture of our Christian walks.
There are times we are shattered to pieces as we go through trials and storms. We can feel broken and useless, ready to call it in.
But God can make beauty out of anything and it comes as a result of refining our hearts and minds.
Oftentimes, the Bible lays out for us that God will bring us into the fire in order to purify us. To clarify, it helps to understand the basics of how a metal smith works with metals.
In layman’s terms (my level of understanding this), a refiner heats the metal (fire), removes the dross (discards), and is left with a pure substance.
Just as the gold fills the cracks in the pottery, God fills our brokenness with refined gold to make us whole again.
He can make beauty out of our ashes.
Do you live for HIS glory?
A motto that should fast to every area in our lives… why not grab a daily reminder to boast for Whom we live to please?
Soli deo Gloria!
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I so love this analogy!
Such a beautiful visual image of God’s restoration.