The Broken Pieces

Read: Romans 6
Reflect: It is becoming a bit of a tradition. Each spring the girls dig through their piggy banks and compile their change to purchase something new for their fairy garden. We head to the same greenhouse. Peruse the same little figurines. And apparently keep learning the same lessons over and over again.
On the way to the greenhouse this year I gave a quick glance to the backseat and then launched into the “Do You Remember?” speech. “Do you remember last year when mommy said do not touch anything? Do you remember last year when you didn’t listen? Do you remember last year when you broke the lamb’s leg off? Do you remember last year when you were shown kindness and they didn’t make you pay for it? Okay? Great. Let’s not do that this year.”
Flash forward fifteen minutes. The little wishing well went flying out of her hand, hit the concrete floor and shattered. She looked at me with tears welling and said, “What happens now?” Stuck between a laugh and a cry myself, I said, “Well, you pay for it. You broke it and when you break something you need to pay what you owe.” The cashier looked at this dear four-year-old holding her purse and the broken pieces and said, “No, you give it to me and you go get a new one. I will take the broken pieces.”
Dear friends, what a beautiful picture of the Savior’s unrelenting mercy to us. My daughter didn’t deserve to have her slate wiped clean (not only once, but twice!) but that dear cashier looked at her with mercy and let her hand over the broken pieces.
We ourselves are broken. We are broken with sin. And just like my dear little repeat offender, we too are repeat offenders. We continue to fall and stumble and watch the pieces scatter around us. Thankfully, we have a Father who is like that store cashier. We have a Father who will take our brokenness, if we surrender it to him. We have a Father who took our punishment for sin upon Himself.
Sometimes we (meaning, “I”) forget this foundational and unbelievable truth. I have a Father who suffered and died a sinner’s death on the cross. For me! For all my broken pieces. I have done nothing to deserve this and can never repay him.
When we watch our sins shatter our lives and we see the broken pieces around us, let us remember: “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:22-23). We just need to hand our broken pieces over to the Father, ask for forgiveness and accept the gift he has given us.
Apply: Have you reflected lately on the gift that you have been given? Let us stop, pause and thank our Father for gathering the broken pieces of our sinful lives and taking our punishment for us so that we may spend eternal life with him. What a wonderful unrelenting merciful Lord we have!