It’s a joy to hear from Elisabeth Buono this week! Want to learn more about her? Just stop by the contributors page!
A couple years ago, I spent some time in a live-in residential treatment center in which our good Savior radically changed my life by taking hold of my heart and leading me to fall in love with His. While in that program, I met someone who had already graduated from it, and we had breakfast together a few mornings each week.
We’re both coffee drinkers, and we had certain mugs we typically drank out of each morning. One time, she told me something that has stuck with me since, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. When she was in the program, she had a favorite mug, but it had a chip in it. One day she found out that someone had thrown it away because it was broken. While she was upset, there wasn’t much to be done about it. Months went by, and when she graduated from the program, someone gave her a gift- her favorite mug which they had pulled out of the trash and saved for her.
The reason she liked the mug wasn’t just because it was cute…it was because it was a lot like her…a lot like all of us. We’re all just chipped mugs. We are designed to fulfill a purpose, and yet we were born with a problem in us that would keep us from living that out, one that would make us appear unusable to so many people. And yet we have a God Who pulled us out of the trash. He saw we were broken by sin, and He wanted us. He sees we are still broken and blemished by imperfection until He brings us home to His perfect Heaven, and yet He uses us.
We still have the chip of sin in our lives, but that no longer defines us. The blood of Christ covered the entirely chipped and shattered mug that was our life, and in His amazing grace pieced it back into a masterpiece to be used for His glory (Eph. 2:10). Now when God looks at us, He doesn’t see the chip…He sees His perfect Son. He sees the work done on the Cross to make us His children. Through His power made perfect in weakness, our lives are made complete in Him and given a beautiful purpose to live for His glory (2 Cor. 12:9, Col. 2:10, 1 Cor. 1:31).
We are rescued and loved. Broken but treasured. Imperfect yet wanted. Because we have a Savior Who died for and fiercely loves chipped mugs like you and like me. And in His strength and goodness, and not any of our own, we can live out what He made us to be – earthen vessels proclaiming His Gospel and bringing Him glory, “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Cor. 4:7b).
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