Why are we so afraid to show people our wounds? Probably because we don’t want to feel the shame of what they will say if we opened up and revealed our chipped jars and cracks in our pots.
So, we chose to keep our broken hearts under wraps because we know that the weight of other people’s opinions will shatter our fragile hearts completely. We believe that no one, not even God, can put a splintered heart back together again. However, maybe it’s time to leave our Sunday “I’m-fine-thanks-very-much” masks at the church door so that the transcendent character of God can shine through our cracked pots.
God knows we are all fragile, clay, earthen vessels but He still chooses to hold His transcendent character within us. 2 Corinthians 5:7-12 tells that promise to us, ‘…this beautiful treasure is contained in us- cracked pots made of earth and clay-so that the transcendent character of this power will be clearly seen as coming from God and not from us. We are all cracked and chipped from our afflictions on all sides, but we are not crushed by them. We are bewildered at times, but we do not give in to despair. We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. We have been knocked down, but we are not destroyed. We always carry around in our bodies the reality of the brutal death and suffering of Jesus. As a result, His resurrection life rises and reveals its wondrous power in our bodies as well. For while we live, we are constantly handed over to death on account of Jesus so that His life may be revealed even in our mortal bodies of flesh. So, death is constantly at work in us, but life is working in you.’ (The Voice Bible)
Discomfort is the price of admission to a crucified life. If we, as believers, carry around the death and suffering of Jesus, why do we try so desperately to fill up the cracks in our pots? Why do we feel we have to fix ourselves up and fix other people up before the supernatural, boundless character of God can shine out of us? Isn’t that what we want? For Him to leak out of our cracked pots so people see Him rather than ourselves?
For years I’ve kept my wounding to myself, not wanting to speak out my afflictions because I believed that people would reject me because of the mistakes I’ve made. But it’s God’s voice that speaks the loudest through my cracked pot. It’s His transcendent power that shines brightly in the fragmented brokenness of this life. Ann Voskamp reminds me in the pages of her book, The Broken Way that, “He calls the wounded to be the world changers”.
Yes, I know what it feels like to be wounded over and over again by the hunter, Satan. But if there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, is that the more times I’ve been knocked down by Satan, the more times he’s tried to crush me, the more times the accuser has tried to steal, kill and destroy me, the more times he thinks he has won, only reveals more cracks for God’s transcendent power to leak out of me.
Jesus’ body was cracked, chipped, crushed, persecuted, and abandoned on that cross. However, the beautiful treasure that was the transcendent character of God shone out of His cracked pot, and it was those wounds that enabled Jesus to change the world.
Wendy xo
Like myself, have you tried to hide your wounds only to realise that it’s through the cracks of your brokenness that God’s transcendent character shines the best?
