You might flub in work, friendships, marriages, or even in service to God. That doesn’t mean God can’t take the pieces and rebuild. Whatever failure you go through doesn’t erase the value He sees in you.
Saving the pieces
When I was still at home, every time anybody would drop anything or hear anything break, my mother would yell, “Save the pieces!” She always said it with a bit of a laugh, poking fun at whatever had happened. But there was also a little seriousness in it. She really did want us to save the pieces if anything broke. We couldn’t easily replace most things because we couldn’t afford to. So, if we blundered something, the first order of business was to see if we could fix what we’d done.
I keep hearing those words in my head as I think about what I am trying to do in my work. They ring in my ears as I try to have more faith. And they came back to me this morning as I read this article from Russell Gehrlein about how God uses our failures at work. I think about them in the context of a talk I once heard from former pastor Tim Fletcher, who now works with trauma and substance abuse recovery organizations.
Fletcher pointed out that God, as the potter, doesn’t just make the pot and toss it out if it breaks. He is willing and has the power to take the pieces, break them completely down back into crumbs, and start over. We don’t often think about that part. We only think of the beginning of the vessel and His right to initially make us however He wants. My guess is that that’s probably because of how we focus on Romans 9:21.
Failure doesn’t mean done
Sometimes, if work or life or even faith isn’t going well, we have to start over. We have to let go of the feeling that, if the result of our effort is failure, our worth somehow is gone. It isn’t. We were valued even when we were still dust of the Earth and an idea in God’s head. That value doesn’t disappear when all we are are pieces for Him to pick up, when we have no other choice but to let Him make us dust again to fix it.
You might be in pieces because you have failed today. But today is not the end of your story. He will make sure of it, if you just let Him.