Tuesday With Teri

        This week we continue our advent celebration.  Each week, four prior to Christmas Eve, we gather to light a candle and consider the coming of our savior.  It is a wonderful time to stop in the midst of the season and truly focus on the reason for all the wonderful merriment of Christmas.  These devotion entries will center on the advent themes of Hope, Joy, Peace and Love.  This week we consider JOY.

           I could not help but smile as I read this facebook post from one of the young moms at our church, she wrote…

“I asked Zachary to pick out the little broken crayons for a project. He comes back with a handful and tells me that there weren’t enough so he had to make some (by breaking our good crayons). God is testing me…”

         Beyond the hilarity of this miscommunication and Zachary’s creative problem solving skills, I keep thinking of those broken crayons.  Though I do not know what sort of project his mom had in mind when she asked for the little broken crayon pieces, I am assuming it might involve melting them into something new, beautiful or useful.  Broken crayons are perfect for things like that…they are easier to melt and are more than likely not being used in their current state.

          While it may not have been his mom’s intent, little Zachary’s efforts were meant to provide his mom with all the pieces she might need for her project.  Are we like these crayons?  Perhaps we are whole and finding ourselves being put to use just as we are, where we are.  Perhaps we are broken, waiting for God to repurpose us for His glory and melt us into His perfect will.  PERHAPS we are intact, but find God snapping us into the piece He needs for His perfect plan for our lives.

         I think of the many times I have felt broken and realize that it has been in these times that I found growth and God’s grace.  When I am broken, I am eagerly seeking my God.  When I am broken, I am listening to God.  When I am broken, I am more easily molded into what God’s plans are for me.  Just like Zachary broke perfectly good crayons, maybe God breaks seemingly perfectly good people so He can use them and melt them into something even better!

This week of advent, we consider the JOY the birth of our Savior brought to us all.  Today I am praising God that the advent of the Christ child, means that though I may be broken He can restore me for His glory.  The birth of our savior was indeed, “good news of a great JOY, which shall be for all people”!

May we take JOY in knowing He has provided redemption for all people…

broken people.

“And the angle said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold I I bring you good new of a great joy which shall be to all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”   Luke 2:10-11