Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

Our society generally does not favour such repair; we live in a disposable society, where when something breaks, it gets thrown away.  It can actually be cheaper, for example, to buy a new printer than to buy a cartridge for it when the ink runs out. This attitude can even be carried over into the workplace, with many employees feeling that they are discarded whenever it is convenient for the company.

God does not view us as disposable, however. He is the Potter who re-forms and re-works the clay into something beautiful (see Jer 18). I like the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, however, because it does not attempt to disguise the breakage; it uses something precious to repair and strengthen. Jesus still bore the scars of the crucifixion in His resurrected body (in Michael Card’s words, He is ‘known by the scars’). We belong to a God who makes whole (He assembles the broken, shattered pieces of our lives into something beautiful, as Aaron Shust puts it.) We are His living examples of kintsugi.

This afternoon we enjoyed a very informal Christmas Celebration, held at Furlong Road Methodist Church. The church had knitted figures from the Advent Trail and was beautifully decorated:

Our knitted figures were back after the Nativity Trail and there were prizes to be given to the children who had taken part, thanks to the Co-op:

We enjoyed singing carols and taking part in an interactive re-telling of the Nativity story:

There were Christmas crafts to do and festive refreshments to eat.

Our thanks to Furlong Road Methodist Church for hosting the event and to all who came.

Many people like to give their houses a good clean before putting up Christmas trees and Christmas decorations. The rituals associated with decorating our houses for Christmas go back many years and vary from family to family, but often, these are accompanied by the winter equivalent of the ‘spring clean’!

Decorations and trees are often kept in the loft, and so there is a sense of unearthing these treasures once again and dealing with any dust and damage done to them in the previous eleven months.

Our lives can often feel dusty and dirty, but the good news is we have a God who specialises in cleaning! The Message version of Ps 51 says, ‘Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry’ and goes on to say, ‘Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.’ We can be grateful for the blessing of being clean and purified by God. (1 Jn 1:9)

At Christmas-time, the Royal Mail in the UK delivers many cards and parcels, and they are simply one of the many companies working to get presents from A to B! It can be a frustrating time, waiting for deliveries (I am rarely home and so it is often a logistical nightmare trying to arrange collection of parcels, often leading to much frustration!), and sometimes parcels don’t arrive on time.

On the whole, though, I’m grateful for our postal and delivery services which do a fantastic job, often in very unpleasant weather. When we talk about God as our Deliverer, though, we are not really thinking of this kind of delivery. Nor are we talking about the kind of delivery we hope politicians may give on their manifesto promises! Deliverance is all about being rescued and set free.

Christmas reminds us that the Son of God came to set us free (Gal 5:1). Paul says, ‘In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.’ (Eph 3:12) Because God delivers us from sin, the penalties of sin and the punishments for sin, we can now know freedom and confidence. Frequently in the Old Testament (particularly in the book of Judges), we are told that God raised up a deliverer for His people (see Judges 3:9,15; also 2 Kings 13:5). We can now rejoice in the Deliverer sent by God to rescue all people!

There were some heart-warming stories of the emergency services rescuing people from the floods which happened in our area in November. When disasters happen – be they fires, floods or sudden illness – we are very grateful for all who work to save and rescue, often risking their own lives to rescue us.

Our carol service this year is called ‘God’s Great Rescue Plan’, because Christmas is a story of rescue. We often don’t think of it this way, because we don’t really see the peril we’re in. We can be spiritually blind to our needs, thinking that life is simply about the here and now. But God’s word tells us that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Rom 3:23) and that we are dead in transgressions and sins (Eph 2:1). We’re in a desperate situation and we can’t get out of this mess by ourselves.

The blessing of Christmas is that God has sent us a Rescuer, a Saviour. The very name ‘Jesus’ tells us this: He was to be called Jesus ‘because he will save his people from their sins.’ (Matt 1:21) Every time we say that name, we are acknowledging the blessing of a Saviour!

In Jesus, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:14). One of the greatest blessings we can ever have is to know that there is no condemnation now for us because we have been forgiven, cleansed and set right with God.

So often, we are aware of our failings, the many times we let ourselves down, our friends and family, and God. We mess up on such a regular basis that we can feel there is no point trying again. Despair can wrap its tentacles around our hearts and we can feel there is no hope for change. But the good news of the gospel is that God forgives all our sins and removes all the barriers between us and God and therefore gives us power to forgive and be forgiven. As the psalmist said by faith, ‘with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.’ (Ps 130:4)

Forgiveness sets us free. Now that’s a blessing worth singing about!