I know this makes me sound like a little kid, but I still get a thrill out of a new box of crayons. And it’s even cooler if you get a box with a built-in sharpener on the back. Sixty-four perfectly formed little sticks of potential color explosions. There’s so much so much available creativity waiting in that perfect little box. Whether you’re six years old and learning to color within the lines, or you’re sixteen and doing a detailed pointillism picture, or sixty and carefully coloring a picture to pass the lonely hours, crayons are just fun.
But then one breaks, and spoils the perfect symmetry of the box. And then there’s that color that you use more than all the rest, and it’s suddenly shorter, and you can barely see it anymore sticking out of the box. Before long, you usually end up with a pile of broken crayons, bits and pieces showing wear and tear and sometimes abuse from overuse. They no longer fit in the box with the sharpener on the back, so you get a small pencil box and throw the broken pieces in it. They’re not pretty anymore and have lost the thrill of that new crayon appeal, sometimes the wrapper is missing, and it’s nothing but a bear-naked crayon. But if the truth be told, every one of those small broken pieces still color just as beautifully as when they were whole. Being broken doesn’t mean they lost their ability to produce color. Even the tiniest piece still produces the vibrant color it did when it was whole, but it just doesn’t last as long.
We’re no different than those broken crayons. We start out in life perfectly formed little sticks of potential creativity and color. As life goes on, some parts get broken and some are overused or abused, sometimes we lose the wrapper that tells our specific color name. Soon this once-perfect box of crayons is thrown in an old pencil box and seems discarded and useless. People tend to want perfectly formed crayons and find digging through a box of broken pieces nothing more than unnecessary work. Why go for the broken when you can have the new? But those broken pieces know that story of beauty and pain. The beauty of creating a beautiful picture of life, while suffering the pain of being broken.
It takes the artist to still see potential in the broken pieces. The artist knows that those small remaining pieces can still make a masterpiece when placed in the right hands. So give your brokenness to God and watch him turn those broken parts into a beautiful masterpiece. He can use every part of your life, even the broken parts, to make this masterpiece shine to its full potential.
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.” Eph 2:10 NLT
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| A crayon pointillism picture I did in High School. |