Day 240 What Do You See?

 

8/28/2025

"You can look at a picture for a week and never 

think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a

second and think of it all your life."

Joan Miro

 

My devotional for this morning, Beauty in Brokenness, comes at a time when I am still grieving over news from yesterday and days before, but it is a reminder that God is in the midst of everything that concerns me, that concerns us. The analogy given in the message was one of the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold called kintsugi. Not only does the gold used to repair the cracks repair the fractures in the broken pottery, but the gold increases the value of the vessel. Once just a pot, broken and repaired, but not just repaired, but transformed into a rare piece of costly art. Once with imperfections, now restored to greater beauty and worth. And so it is with the transformed life that results when we are born again into the newness of a Christ-centered life. Our lives, broken, hurt, scarred changed in the twinkling of His eyes. His grace, mercy, and love fills the emptiness of our lives, once seared with pain and disappointments, now with radiant hope.

In God's prophesy of the restoration of His chosen people, He tells Ezekiel, the prophet to tell His people the following: "I Myself will be the Shepherd of My sheep, and cause them to lie down in peace," the Lord God says. "I will seek my lost ones, those who strayed away, and bring them safely home again. I will put splints and bandages upon their broken limbs and heal the sick...!" Ezekiel 34:16

Throughout the pages of scripture God promises to heal and restore His people, and He promises peace. Yet in our world today we see little peace, but we also see ripples of hope for revival, transformation, and the greatest and surest hope - the return of the King.

Each day as the Lord leads me, I attempt to write about the important events of the time, of former times, and how God has worked in my life, and in the lives of others, trying to make sense of it all. Today as I was polishing up my piece for yesterday, looking for the image I wanted to use for the post, I kept running across the photos that speak deeply to my soul. I imagine because I pray not only for Israel and the Middle East, and for America, but my prayers cover the world, all the nations, because, as Psalm 24:1 instructs: "The earth is the LORDS's, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein." 

I want to share some photos I found, and I'd like for you to look closely beyond the obvious to what lies beneath or even hidden from view. Search your heart, your soul, your mind, and tell me what you see.

 

                                                                                

There are so many, but I think...I hope you see the common themes, the despair, hopelessness, cries for help, cries to be seen, silent voices, so much, and then a few perhaps even your imagine cannot consider. But the one that speaks to me most, the one I posted on Facebook the other day that reminds me that "a little child shall lead them," is this: