This is the one I couldn’t put back together.

Earlier this week, I placed an empty white coffee mug on the lower shelf of a small table and promptly forgot it was there. A few days later, we needed to move the table.

“What’s your mug doing there, Mom?” my third child asked. I glanced over at the coffee table that held my small blue flowery tea mug from the night before. 

“Yeah, I don’t know, I guess I forgot to put it away,” I answered as I lifted the other small table and moved it quickly, inadvertently flinging the white mug across the room. It landed with a loud smash on the basement floor, white shards spraying over a wide area as the kids cried out in chorus, “MOM! Your favourite mug!”

“Oh THAT mug,” I winced. I sighed. It was true, I did love that mug.

“That’s the one I was talking about!” Number Three cried. “I tried to tell you!”

“Aw I am so sorry! You DID try to tell me and I didn’t understand!” 

“We can fix it!” 

“No,” I said gently as I placed the pieces in a small cardboard box, “this one I can’t fix.”

Since then, my own words have been echoing in my heart.

This one I can’t fix.

The careless word or action. The uncontrollable circumstance or sudden turn of events. The sin that breaks a heart into a million pieces.

Grief washes over me in giant paralyzing waves. Other times it slows to a trickle, and still other times it’s a dull ache that lingers when my mind turns to those things I simply cannot remedy in my life. The things I can’t fix, no matter how hard I try. I need comfort and healing, which find in Jesus. But I’m finding that I also desperately need the hope that one day it won’t be like this anymore. One day, all will be made right. 

We have a Healer and Comforter who tends to the deepest wounds of the heart and brings restoration from destruction. But He is also a Warrior King who has wiped out the sin that entangles and the death that separates forever — the very source of our grief and sorrow. Only He can make “justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:24).

And He has done it.

It is finished. 

Romans 5:1-12 says,

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

Hallelujah! On this Holy Week we remember the cost of such love and fall down in worship of the One who willingly gave up His life so that we could be healed and restored forever and the world could be made new.

Living in the now and the not-yet is full of heartbreak and grief, but the glowing coals of everlasting joy are alive in us. We pray that the Holy Spirit will fan it into flame and incline our hearts to the One who has already redeemed what we ourselves are powerless to fix so that we may give glory to Jesus forever!