Broken vessels

If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you've probably picked up on a common theme in it.  If you've been a Christian for any amount of time, you've doubtless picked up on the same theme.  Being a Christian is hard.  We are expected to bring light into a dark world, to season the blandness of our world with salt.  We are the ones that God has called to minister to the hurting, to heal the sick, and to pour into people who need Jesus. 

But eventually - and often it's sooner rather than later - our own springs of inspiration and kindliness dry up.  Who pours into us so that we can continue pouring into others?  It is, in fact, none other than the living God.  He is the only one who is able to fill broken vessels, to repair the cracks in our lives and make us into something beautiful.

Broken Vessel

By Yvonne Coleman-Burney

I kneel before you broken and worn
frighten by my past, bewildered and torn,
poked and bleeding from life's little thorns.

The setbacks, pitfalls broken pieces of a heart
that has been bruised, scorned and torn apart.
Broken this vessel but mended through strength
faith in Jesus whom my father has sent.

The spirit that dwells within to fill the cracks and
the well will soon be refilled. Housed in this vessel
your love so lives, as it heals and restores the life
you so freely give.

Making this vessel whole by giving you all of me
letting you take full control, they way it should be.
Soon a broken vessel I will no longer be but a
piece of clay that will be molded and set free
from the loving hands of only thee.

 

2 Corinthians 4:5-11

⁵ For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.  ⁷ But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. ⁸ We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. ¹⁰ We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. ¹¹ For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.