The Japanese art of kintsugi is the art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, treating breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
This kind of repair makes the piece unique and quite often the repaired pot is actually more valuable and beautiful than it was before it got broken. I was reminded of Jeremiah 18:1-6 when I learned about this art form. In that passage, Jeremiah is taken to watch a master potter at work, seeing how he moulds marred clay into another pot, forming beautiful objects from apparently flawed clay, and was reminded that God is indeed the Master Potter, shaping and forming our lives as He sees fit.
Aaron Shust sings ‘You assemble all our broken, shattered pieces/ More beautiful than I have ever known.’ (‘Long Live The King’) Life is fraught with trials and difficulties and at times the scars and cracks in our lives are very visible. Nonetheless, God is able to work those tragedies into the pot of our life to make something valuable and unique. He knows all about kuntsugi art forms, choosing to repair and transform our broken lives into something magnificent that reflects His glory. We are mended not with powdered gold, silver, or platinum but with the precious blood of Christ (1 Pet 1:17-19), receiving His healing and strengthening by His wounds (see Is 53:5, 1 Pet 2:24). Our Saviour’s scars are still visible in His glorious resurrected body; they are ‘the marks of death God chose never to erase.’ (‘Known By the Scars’, Michael Card) We cannot expect our transformation to be any different.