Volume 28, No. 49
December 28, 2003
       
Shattering Experiences

  Call it breaking news.

  One day in 1903, French chemist Edouard Benedictus dropped an empty glass flask.  It shattered, but held its shape.  Amazed and perplexed, the scientist examined the container more closely and discovered the inside was coated with a film of cellulose nitrate, a chemical he’d worked with earlier in the day.  It was the interior coating that kept the flask together.

   Soon after, Benedictus read a newspaper story about a girl hurt by flying glass in an accident involving the newly-invented automobile.  Reminded of the fragmented flask, the chemist realized that coating windshields would make them far less dangerous.  A hundred years later, vehicles are still made safer by variations of the shatter-resistant glass he produced — a coating of plastic between two layers of glass.

   As we stand on the verge of a new year, that small story holds a few valuable lessons.  First, some of the most important things God wants us to learn come by serendipity — we find them inadvertently, often when we’re preoccupied with something else.  What looks on the surface like something negative may hold the key to a deeper insight, about ourselves, or others, or life in general.

   Learn to look past the superficial circumstances to why you’re reacting as you are.  Get beyond the triggers of your anger, envy, disappointment or desire to the root causes that lay buried below.   Be willing to probe the inevitable pockets of emptiness that are part of your life so you can be more aware of where you’re vulnerable and how you can protect yourself against sin and temptation.  Use your Bible as a mirror and a blade.  “For the word of God is full of living power,” says Hebrews 4:12.  “It’s sharper than the sharpest knife,
cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires.  It exposes us for what we really are.”  And what we can be.  

   That process is so vital because each of us will face some shattering experiences in the year ahead;  experiences that will test our faith and tax the very foundations upon which we’ve built our lives.  We’ll have to deal with injury and injustice, hurt and heartache, loss and lament.  Those things will be much easier to cope with if we recognize that absolute control belongs to a God who sees, knows and loves much more than we.  

   Amid pain and disappointment, remember the words a friend spoke to Job at the height of his suffering:  “In the past, you’ve encouraged many a troubled soul to trust in God;  you’ve supported those who were weak.  Your words have strengthened the fallen;  you steadied those who wavered.  But now when trouble strikes you faint and are broken.  Does your reverence for God give you no confidence?  Shouldn’t you believe God will care for those who are upright?” (Job 4:3-6)  May your response to hardship shout a resounding “Yes!”    

   Especially since there is often great strength in brokeness.  Suffering comes with no guarantee of either godliness or growth, but — if we respond in the right way — it has immense power to clear the mind, shape the heart and fortify the will.  In our weakness we see much more clearly the strength of God.  Sadly, most of us respond better out of need than gratitude.  

   Besides, being even the most faithful Christian won’t spare us from harm.  In this busted world of ours, we too will have to contend with broken hearts, broken bodies and broken wills.  But in great brokeness there is great blessing;  a liberating new reliance on God instead of ourselves;  a newfound freedom that comes of releasing our illusionary control over rights, rules or results. Sometimes our loving Father must smash our wills to smash our chains.

   But, like the chemist’s flask, we can be broken without falling to pieces. “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources, He will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit... And may you have the power to understand... how deep his love really is... Then you’ll be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” (Eph. 3:16,18,19).  
   Sometimes broken vessels hold the most.
 

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To subscribe, contact sgamble@bfree.on.ca