Day 14

‘On that day’, says the Lord,

‘I will assemble the lame and gather

those who have been driven away,

and those whom I have afflicted.

The lame I will make the remnant,

and those who were cast off, a strong nation;

and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion

now and for evermore.’

Micah 4:6-7

The Repair Shop

As far as I know The Repair Shop doesn’t do Kintsugi. The ceramic expert does manage wonderfully to restore damaged porcelain and earthenware – but it’s repaired to hide the breaks. The philosophy behind Kintsugi, a form of Japanese art of restoring broken pots and bowls, is not to hide the damage but to highlight it, often with gold – the result, a new beautiful object but with a history of previous wear and tear. It is a wonderful image of God’s work in human lives.

So all the promises in the Bible point in different ways to this process of God’s restoration of life – our damaged parts are not eradicated or covered up because God has skills to repair the damage so as to make us into something new and beautiful. Gold is his chosen material. Thus in the text for today, the ‘lame’ will be the survivors to rebuild the nation, and those thought ready for the scrap heap become its key pillars.

In God’s new age, inaugurated by the coming of Jesus, no one is discarded, however rubbish we may feel. He is always ready to work on and in us, his Repair Shop.

Mark