“How do you know when the gold is purified?” we asked him, and he answered, “When I can see my face in the liquid gold, then it is pure.”[1]
God’s Transformative Refining
The Japanese art form of kintsugi (“golden joinery”) or kintsukuroi, (“golden repair”) takes shattered pieces of pottery and carefully reunites them into a whole using an expensive lacquer containing powdered gold, silver, and platinum. The result is a metamorphosis. Common pieces of pottery are transformed into matchless pieces whose aesthetic and economic value increase beyond anything previously imagined.[2]
What an awesome picture of God’s redemptive work. Whether our brokenness is the result of circumstances beyond our control, or our own sinful choices, Jesus beckons us to Himself. As the Creator, Redeemer, and Chief Potter of the world, He promises to use us for His glory and to make us whole. He gently reunites us to God, our true selves, and one another.
What shattered area of your life will you bring to Him today?
[1] One day we took the children to see a goldsmith refine gold after the ancient manner of the East. He was sitting beside his little charcoal fire. In the red glow lay a common curved roof tile. Another tile covered it like a lid. This was the crucible. In it was the medicine made of salt, tamarind fruit and burnt brick dust, and imbedded in it was the gold. The medicine does its appointed work on the gold, “then the fire eats it,” and the goldsmith lifts the gold out with a pair of tongs, lets it cool, rubs it between his fingers, and if not satisfied puts it back again in fresh medicine. This time he blows the fire hotter than it was before, and each time he puts the gold into the crucible, the heat of the fire is increased. “It could not bear it so hot at first, but it can bear it now. What would have destroyed it then helps it now” he explains. “How do you know when the gold is purified?” we asked him, and he answered, “When I can see my face in it (the liquid gold in the crucible) then it is pure.
Amy Carmichael, Gold Cord [with minor edits for clarity]
[2] Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty work within us, to do exceedingly abundantly more than we would ever dare to ask, hope or dream for. Ephesians 3:20