THE SUNDAY SERMONETTE: Broken Pieces and Dusty Dust.

For Baby Boomers, Saturday mornings were magical times. The telly was bursting at the seams with cartoons and serials. Sky King. Roy Rodgers. Looney Tunes. And The Lone Ranger. I was especially fond of Bugs Bunny and his outlandish foolishness.

One bright Saturday morning, I watched dear old Bugs piece together a “steam engine” from a wooden crate, some wheels, and a tin coffee pot. My over-imaginative little self said, “Self, you can do that!” As Dad cut grass and Mom cleaned the house, I set out to build my own steam engine.

Looking around for the needed parts, I noticed my great-grandmother’s porcelain teapot. I attached it to some cardboard boxes with rubber bands, put it all on my little red Flyer wagon, and down the hall I rolled. Suddenly, the bands holding the lid snapped—the lid was airborne, hit the wall, and shattered into a million pieces. Mom was none too pleased, neither was my derriere after she applied the Board of Education—a bolo board. Every time I look at Mom’s old teapot on the kitchen shelf, I see its lid flying through the air. I can see the shattered pieces lying on the floor.

Are there any shattered pieces in your life right now? Those broken pieces can sometimes be glued back together, letting new light shine through the cracks. Wow! That’s a beautiful story! But what about those times when things are shattered beyond repair? Shattered into dust? You can’t glue dust. What was once precious is now reduced to powder; one tiny puff and it’s gone. Do you feel hopeless when that happens?

If we could have a cup of coffee at the old Brick and Spoon, we could compare shattered dust stories. Perhaps, after a few tears and nose wipes, we’d look for a solution to the problem, saying, “Hey God! Please fix this. Edit this story. Give it a different ending. Repair this heartbreaking reality.” However, what if fixing, editing, and repairing isn’t what God has in mind?

What if God wants to make something completely brand-new? Right now. No matter how impossible our circumstances may seem? You see, dust is the exact ingredient God loves to use. We think our shattered lives can’t possibly be repaired. But He can take the shattered pieces and dust and create something entirely new. We might see the dust as the useless byproduct of life’s hurt, pain, and injustice. God sees it as something altogether different—He created us from dust.

He can take the dust from our shattered lives and remold it, twist it, reshape it into a new you if you let him! Dust doesn’t signify the end. It’s often what must be present for the new to begin. We can trust Him with our dust.

Disappointments? Life? The world? These things can shake us, break us, and make us question everything—but—they don’t have to mean all hope is lost. When we place our lives entirely in Father God’s hands, we can believe with all our hearts that He’s making something glorious out of nothing more than dust—our dust.

Ponder this and go forth.