"Going once, going twice,
sold for $7,000.00!" The
auctioneer said right before his gavel hit the
table. Rita Coors was elated.
She'd just purchased a porcelain mask, hand
painted by John Denver.
She couldn't wait to hold it
in her hands. As the
auctioneer at the 1997 Charity Celebrity Ball
for Hospice of Metropolitan
Denver handed her the mask, it slipped through
her fingers and shattered
into a million pieces on the floor.
She didn't demand her money
back or abandoned the
broken piece of art. Instead, Mrs. Coors picked
up the pieces and took
them home with her. Later she decided to place
the broken pieces around
a collection of John Denver photographs. She
made something beautiful out
of the accident. Now she not only had a souvenir
from a celebrity, but
a story to tell too.
Brokenness isn't unusual.
Life often slips through
our fingers and shatters at our feet. When it
does, the best thing we can
do is pick up the pieces and make something
beautiful out of it, and then
be willing to share the story with others who've
been shattered too.
—Leadership Journal, Winter
2001, p. 40 Illustration
by Jim L. Wilson
Psalm
51:8-13 KJV "Make
me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones
which thou hast broken may
rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot
out all mine iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a
right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not
thy holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and
uphold me with thy free spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and
sinners shall be converted
unto thee."
BROKENNESS
In Larry Crabb's book,
Shattered Dreams, he wrote:
"I shift from walking in the way of flesh to
walking in the way of the
Spirit when the pain of life destroys my
confidence in my ability to make
life work and when it exposes as intolerable,
insubordinate arrogance my
demand to feel good. That is the experience of
brokenness."
—Shattered Dreams, p. 154,
Illustration by Jim L.
Wilson and Ed Rowell
Galatians
5:16 KJV "This
I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not
fulfil the lust of the
flesh."
In his book, Future Church,
Jim Wilson writes, “Brokenness
isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A farmer doesn’t
plant his crop in cement;
rather, he chooses good soil, breaks it up, and
then sows the seed. Unbroken
soil does not produce abundant crops, but
cultivated soil incubates life.
A butterfly could never flutter in the spring
air without breaking its
cocoon and neither could an eaglet emerge
without breaking its shell.
Jesus could not feed the four
thousand until he broke
the bread (Mark 8:1-8).
The sinful woman could
not pour the costly perfume over Jesus until she
broke the alabaster box
(Luke 7:37). God
could not reconcile Himself
to sinful man until he broke down the wall that
separated Him from us (Ephesians
2:14). We could never know salvation
without Jesus’ broken body (1
Corinthians 11:24).
In many ways, we are not
useful until we are broken.
Psalm
51:17 NLT “The
sacrifice you want is a broken spirit. A broken
and repentant heart, O
God, you will not despise.
—Future Church, Ministry in a
Post-Seeker Age, p.
137-8 Illustration by Jim L. Wilson
In his book Intentional
Disciplemaking, Ron Bennett
writes, “Brokenness happens when you realize
that you are a channel rather
than a source: that you are dependent rather
than independent. Brokenness
means performing for an audience of one.”
-- Intentional
Disciplemaking, 104. Illustration by
Jim L. Wilson
Psalm 51:17 NLT “The
sacrifice you want is a broken
spirit. A broken and repentant heart, O God, you
will not despise.
The
anonymous buyer had no idea that Banksy had
built a shredder into the frame of his 2006
painting, “Girl With a Balloon,”
when she paid $1.37 million dollars for it.
Instead of attempting to nullify
the purchase with Sotherby’s, she decided to
hold on to the “piece of art
history.” In an ironic twist, the
half-shredded painting increased in value
after it was partially destroyed.
Most of the
time, broken things are worthless—however;
there are some things that are worth even
more after they are broken. —Jim L.
Wilson
