Pastor Mike Nodland of the Christian Fellowship Church in Vining, IA.

Years ago, I took a youth group to Door County, Wis., for a retreat. We decided to watch a movie, and set up a projector, as one of our teens wrestled with a projector screen, getting the legs of the screen going in the right direction. Sitting down, he tripped on the projector’s audio cord wrapped around the screen’s legs, toppling it over and striking a floor lamp causing it to fall against a cabinet, knocking an antique bowl onto the floor, and shattering it into pieces.

Now what? How could we restore something of such value?

I read of the ancient art of Kintsugi, a Japanese art, whereby pottery is mended with powdered gold and a resin. The process treats the repair of the antique as a part of the pottery’s history, instead of an attempt to disguise the breakage. That could work for our shattered antique!

A young couple in a garden shattered their perfect life when they ate a forbidden fruit against God’s command, ruining their relationship with Him. Nothing could mend that breakage except God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. He continues to mend relationships today.

We don’t become perfect, but we do become perfectly forgiven. Trust in Jesus today! He’s into “spiritual Kintsugi!”