Shards of Glass

"...you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings." Isaiah 58:12b

Last year during my sister's cancer journey, a friend had told me that they had received an email from Paul, her husband giving a rundown of the medical things that had transpired. Her path was littered along the way with bad news at every turn, medically speaking. When there were glimmers of hope they were quickly dashed although God carried us all through this experience. The email that my brother-in-law had written stated at the end, "How many times can I shatter before I break?"

Don't I know that question too well as my personal experience was 8 years of hope continually dashed by despair. But we continue to hope...and continue...and continue.

We all face experiences that shatter our world and steal our hope, our joy and our peace. We end up fragile, exhaustion and broken wondering if we will ever be the same. Thankfully...we will not! God will not only repair our broken walls but he will "restore our streets" that lead us to a new home, a new way of living and a new testimony of how God saves.

I feel within me broken walls since my sister's death...fragile streets which I walk upon so this verse was so dear to me this morning. I have never read this verse before so it came to me as fresh baked bread this morning. It reminded me of a quote from Ken Gire in "A New Kind of Normal" which I will close with.

"When suffering shatters the carefully kept vase that is our lives, God stoops to pick up the pieces. But he doesn't put them back together as a restoration project patterned after our former selves. Instead, he sifts through the rubble and selects some of the shards as raw material for another project - a mosaic that tells the story of redemption."