Peters off the Prairies: Beauty out of Brokenness

There is hardly a day that goes by that I am not confronted with the brokenness of this world.

Families living off the garbage dumps in Zimbabwe

I sat with Phil in a Michael Bublé concert the other night and found I had tears running down my face as I listened to the opening band sing a remake of the song “Fix You” by Cold Play. That is so what my heart wants to do with the pain in this world, just fix it! As I sat there and listened to that moving song, pictures and thoughts flew through my head of pain, misery, despair….. the memory of an Aboriginal man sleeping in his own urine under a street bench in downtown Winnipeg…

so many children!!

remembering what Phil shared about 600 families living off a garbage dump in Zimbabwe, drinking its run-off water, with no options of education for their children…. the 10-year-old girl who didn’t show up for her Open Schools literacy lesson because she had to “work” so that she could eat that day…

yesterday Michael sending us a picture in a text message of his “soccer boys” who live in the favela of Sao Paulo, happy smiling faces, but crying out for someone to notice them.

Michael and his futbol boys in Brazil

It’s everywhere, and what overwhelms and discourages me is the feeling of not having solutions, or feeling like the solutions that may exist will rarely make a difference.

Maybe believing that we might have solutions is a mistake. How often have I asked my husband not to try to fix my problem, but simply to listen and to walk along side me.

Can I believe that the path out of some broken, disregarded, cracked lives is maybe not a quick fix, but a re-directing, a new departure point on a journey.

When I took a wrong turn on my way to pick up Phil from the Winnipeg airport last week I’m so glad the GPS didn’t tell me “You idiot, that’s it, your finished, I give up on you.” No, the screen goes blank, and after a couple of seconds I can read a hopeful …“recalculating”. Then it picks up my location and shows me a new route.

Maybe the best we can do is help our neighbor with some “recalculating” on the GPS of their life, or better yet, walk along side them on the journey: writing that letter, making that phone call, volunteering in that center, fighting for the poor, or writing that check.

I went to the Thrift Store a week ago and picked up these discarded old jars. Who knows how long they had been sitting there. They were definitely nothing special to look at.

Thrift Store finds...

One of the many thrift stores here in Manitoba

A good friend of mine, who has an eye to see the potential for beauty in things that I wouldn’t, had an idea. We took them, painted them with 6 different coats of paint, then started sanding them down.

My thrift store finds!

Jars "in process"

The end product!

Wow… with a little work and attention each one started looking different, each beautiful in its own “vintage” way, and eventually each with a different purpose: a vase, a candle holder, a display, a container…. and it was a ton of fun!

Cracks..

The sun breaking through the clouds on my run yesterday

My hearts desire is that we would be moved but not discouraged by all the cracks we see in the world. As my brother-in-law reminded me yesterday:

“There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen.

The beautiful children of South Africa learning to read

I believe in a God that has an unbelievable love for discarded, broken jars, street kids in the favelas of Brazil, the disregarded children living on the garbage dumps of Zimbabwe, the homeless neighbors in our cities…. us. It is what he gave his life for.

What can ultimately be more beautiful and powerful than the eyes of a father seeing through the brokenness in his children to their true beauty.