In this little room were some of my worst sermons. I was a young, arrogant pastoral ministry student hoping to rise to the top. I wanted to be famous for Jesus. As with most times in my life, I was over estimating my own ability.
It is this little second floor chapel in the library where I would rehearse messages yet to be preached. Extemporaneous messes that I believed would be masterpieces. Pieces of partial thoughts wrapped around yet to be fully developed theology to a crowd of a few empty seats.
Most times it was after dark on my rounds as a campus safety officer paying my way through university. The moonlight would break through the crackled panes of stained glass. Hitting the room like a blue spotlight on the small podium at the front of the small room.
I would stand there in the broken light as a very broken young man attempting to pour out something the Father found acceptable. Just me and my words in that little room.
Fast forward 26 years, it is me, the glow of the room, and my words attempting to pour something out the Father finds acceptable. Days have become decades. Lessons have been learned and tassels turned since that day. Yet, in each of us is a child seeking the smile of a Father.
Maybe you have reconciled it. Maybe you found it. Maybe your sonship or daughtership is not broken like mine. Maybe your window is a single pane unbroken. Mine looks more and more like this collage of colors. A piece of blue here. A piece of orange strategically placed there. Some yellow scattered in for good measure. In my eyes, I am a mess. A collision of colors without rhyme or reason. A collage of cascading pieces of scraps that seem misplaced at best.
And then there are moments I get perspective – broken things can have beauty.
As I walked through a season that the broken things are red flags to men making decisions, I am reminded that God has taken the broken pieces of mess to create a masterpiece of who I am. He has carefully crafted the crushed panes and placed them into an order that may not make sense to every on looker, but they are placed by his perfect hands.
In truth, while these words come easily across the page, they are forced out of places of hurt, places of cutting. They are the overflow of a broken spirit that at times finds it difficult to trust the Spirit.
And that is why I came back to this room. To be reminded that at 21, 22, and 23 there were less broken pieces and less cracked glass in my life. Yet today, the broken pieces are supplies for the Savior to make something beautiful. It is not always an easily remembered lesson. It is not a lesson that does not come without pain. Brokenness always does.
So once again I enter this room and I bring my pieces of crushed dreams and shattered spirit asking the master artist to make them a mosaic masterpiece.
