Broken Glass

One of my hobbies I discovered by accident. In Mount Vernon where I went to college there is a river that flows past the edge of campus. At the beginning of my senior year I asked one of my brothers if he wanted to go wading with me on Saturday morning. It became an event we would do every couple weekends just to escape for a while.

On one trip we got to a small island in the middle of the river and I noticed a large chunk of green glass. I don't know how it forms or what it comes from, but I refer to it as kryptonite. I found a few pieces like it, and then began to notice other pieces of glass, most of them green and brown from old beer bottles, but there are clear pieces and different shades of blue as well. Some are old bleach bottles, others are old medicine and tonic bottles. Sometimes you find an intact bottle, other times, pieces that have some how been compressed and shaped into incredible shapes. Other times it's just fragments with no special shape at all.

Over the years I've gotten good at finding the pieces. Sometimes you can be fooled by leaves on the bottom of the river or algae growing on rocks. I still get fooled on the occasion, but it happens a lot less then when I first began. I love wading for glass. The pieces have been carried by the river and the edges are now smooth so you don't have to worry about cutting yourself. I never realized I'd still be doing this two years later, I thought I'd collect some, and put it in a jar. I've now got five jars.

Two weeks ago I took Janette. It was nice to get away and just have some time completely away from everything. She got pretty good at finding the pieces. And I noticed that she picks up the pieces I intentionally leave behind. The old dishes that are solid white or solid blueish green. I don't want them because the light doesn't shine through them, but she loves them, so they get placed in the jar. I love that I have a girl who loves wading with me.

On this last trip I took I began to really think about the glass. Though the edges aren't sharp they are at times rough and jagged. Sometimes they are half buried and covered in dirt and mud. Occasionally you find the mouth piece of a bottle and it has a crayfish living in it, or a few rocks that have gotten wedged in. The pieces of glass are just like us.

There are different colors, different shapes, different sizes, each one is unique. But all of them have something in common. They are all pieces of broken glass that have ended up in a river. Glass doesn't belong in the river. It shouldn't be dirty and buried in the dirt. It should be clear so that light can shine through it. It should be collected and displayed.

Our lives have been broken by sin. The river of sin has dragged us far from where we should be. It has covered us and buried us in the mud so that we can't escape. That's not how we were made to live. God comes, and he picks us up out of the river. He cleans us up, and then He displays us so that His light can shine through us into the darkness of the world.

When I first started collecting glass I had thoughts of polishing each piece until it shined. That proved to be a harder task than I imagined, so each piece gets cleaned of the dirt, but a lot of the time there is stuff on there that won't come off. There is evidence that it's been in the river. Sin scars us. I've written about scars. They tell where we've come from, they tell where God has rescued us from. Scars are important, and scars are beautiful.

We are all like broken glass buried in the river of sin. But God is wading through the river pulling out the pieces that call out to Him. He takes them, and cleans them up, and then they display Him to the world. They display His love, His forgiveness, His grace and His mercy. Each of us is a piece of broken glass. But each one of us is beautiful and desirable to God. He wants every piece in the river.

Peace be with you