When Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast, I was 19 years old. I signed up on the first Presbyterian Disaster Assistance crew to go into the city of Biloxi, Mississippi. I can vividly remember the mess. Each street looked like this:
or worse.
At times, when you would meet folks who were in need before the hurricane hit and were destitute now, it seemed like the mess would never be cleaned up; that the gulf might never be put back together. I went back several times over the next 12 months, and the mantra was always: New Orleans will never be the same.
On Sunday at both Youth Groups, we talked about sin, brokenness, and God's initiative to put us back together. Sin, we defined, is anything that separates us from God. Sometimes sin is doing things we know we should not. Sometimes sin is just evil in the world that causes bad things to happen. Sometimes it's someone's fault, sometimes it's not.
I demonstrated to the students how sin can be like breaking an egg. You can never put the egg back together again perfectly. You could super-glue the pieces, you could try to get every piece back together, but there is no way to get all of the yolk back inside and no way to avoid a weak crack. We read together Romans 5.6-11:
For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person, someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved though him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Even though the egg is broken and the mess is overwhelming, God still sees an egg worth fixing, a life worth saving. God reaches into our mess and makes us new.
We expect, very often, that when God reaches into our mess to save us, that God will make us into that same egg the way it was before it was broken, but it doesn't seem to be true. God makes us into a new creation, made better by our weakness, suffering, and sin. Made perfect by the grace of God.
There is a really neat Japanese pottery form called Kintsugi. In Kintsugi, they take broken pieces of pottery and glue them back together. Instead of trying to hide the cracks, Kintsugi artists use gold paint to highlight the cracks, to make the cracks into an artistic pattern. The cracks are a part of the finished product's beauty rather than its shame.
I think this is how God relates to us. God meets us in our brokenness and in the sinful, chaotic world and makes us into something new, even more beautiful, even more strong because of our brokenness. The pot itself could not put itself back together, but the potter can transform the work into something new and whole.
I believe this is true in our own sinful lives. Sometimes our lives can have sinful actions in them. Teenagers regularly develop bad habits out of rebellion and development. We can develop negative attitudes or bitter feelings. God has the power to transform our thoughts, feelings, and actions if we will let him do so.
I believe this is true in a world where evil takes place. The mantra in New Orleans was right: New Orleans has never been the same, and that is OK. In some ways, New Orleans (and the rest of the gulf coast) has evolved. Some of the ugliness of its underbelly was exposed and cut out. Some of the beauty hiding under its wings was revealed and is now celebrated and cherished. I had the great privilege of seeing God quietly transform lives every day in the gulf coast, and I came to believe that the greatest gift that God can give is hope.
As we look to our neighbors a mere hour down the road, hopelessness, fear, and heartache are easy to find. The work is hard and the road is long; Columbia will never be the same. And yet God promises to intervene, to show up in the ugliness, in the brokenness, in the destruction and despair, in the pain and sorrow. God will be there, and Columbia will never be the same.
As a note of hope, our youth have decided to help out with the relief efforts in Columbia. For the next 3 weeks, we will be collecting Clean-Up Buckets through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to be used in Columbia. Often, PDA uses the buckets collected in a warehouse for disasters like this, but in this case, local churches have been called upon and our buckets will be delivered to Fountain Inn Presbyterian Church in Columbia to be used directly in this area. Please contact me directly if you'd like to get involved with this effort.
Here are some resources about how to talk about tragedies with your family:
Here are some resources about God's love for us in spite of sin:
Here are some photos of youth group on Sunday:
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