Precious Perspective

Twenty years ago I received a hand-thrown, artistically painted ceramic bowl for my birthday. It was a precious reminder to me of hope and healing - a treasure beyond description really, because of its origins and symbolic value.  I have celebrated it countless times in everyday use.  And I have always handled it gently, keeping it safe in the cupboard between paper towels on either side as padding.

Late yesterday afternoon I prepared a couple of salads for today's church potluck. With my finished quinoa and beet creations still in stainless steel mixing bowls, I stood in front of the open cupboard thinking, “What serving bowls should I use?  Hmmm...how about those two I found at Goodwill?  Yes.  Perfect.”

I pulled the larger of the two second-hand bowls out from underneath the other without noticing I’d placed an antique glass butter plate on the same shelf. In the process, I knocked the butter plate, which fell to the next shelf below and chipped the lip of my precious ceramic bowl in several places before shattering into a million splinters on the counter. Two losses in one.

These are small casualties in the big scheme of life, and yet I was temporarily devastated. Ever-so-gently I tried to patch my precious bowl, symbolic of so many good things, but soon realized the type and degree of damages meant it was beyond common use.  Its lip was now weakened.  A definitive, gaping wound with sharp edges lingered, the absent pieces (probably tiny shards) hiding somewhere in the mysterious recesses of my kitchen.

After today's potluck, I returned home to my injured, still precious bowl.  It greeted me from the counter, its brokenness staring into space. I couldn’t help but think how injury and calamity and wreckage of all kinds - even the most catastrophic devastation - are still a matter of perspective; how healing is largely defined by our viewpoint of pain and suffering and loss.  Ultimately, just like this bowl, we will be challenged deeply, perhaps broken and scarred despite every good intention, and yet the precious human spirit - eternal in nature and created in the image of God - cannot be destroyed.

The bowl has found a new purpose while protectively displayed with other meaningful memorabilia above my cabinets.  There it will live a new, retired life while continuing to remind me of its ongoing message: hope and love never die.