More Beautiful for Having Been Broken

When a piece of pottery breaks in Japan, some artisans practice an ancient technique called kintsugi — the art of golden repair. Rather than disguising the fracture or discarding the shattered vessel, the artist carefully mends each crack with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The break is not hidden. It is illuminated. And the restored piece becomes more valuable, more striking, more cherished than the original ever was.

The philosophy behind kintsugi holds that breakage is not something to conceal — it is part of the object's history, worthy of being honored.

Grace works like that.

We come to God with our fractures — marriages strained, promises unkept, years squandered, trust betrayed. Our instinct is to hide the damage, to paste over our brokenness and hope nobody notices. But God does not work with concealer. He works with gold.

When the Apostle Paul begged the Lord three times to remove his thorn in the flesh, the answer came back: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). God did not eliminate the crack. He filled it with something luminous.

Your scars are not disqualifications. In the hands of a gracious God, they become the very places where His light shines through most brilliantly. The world may throw away what is broken. God makes it into a masterpiece.