Broken and Consecrated

About a month ago, I was at my local thrift store again. And, my word: they had a sale on their crystal…for 25 cents a piece. What? This stuff was SO beautiful. I could not believe it! Naturally, I took as much as I could fit into the shopping cart as I had been drooling over much of it for about a year but never thought I would be able to get any of it. Boy! Was I wrong!

John and I never really had a wedding reception or huge amounts of stuff. It was fine with us, as we eloped and wanted to save costs. It worked out and we were happy with the results. Until recently, I never really wanted fine dishes anyways. We would have had to get rid of them or store them. Frankly, we moved too much to be able to so I was fine with it because I didn’t need it when we were always moving and had babies who would have broken it. 

I had my eye on it. Sort of, I tried not to look, think sideways glances and confusion as to why no one had bought it. I heard from a friend that some of the fine crystal glassware was from people who had recently died in the community. It made sense that people didn’t buy it because perhaps it was too special or brought back memories when people were still grieving for lost friends and relatives.

Finally, it all went on sale. And I said: I think I need to buy some of it. Well, I decided then and there to get whatever I wanted. Glassware: you are disgraced no more! Low prices? I’ll take you in! I felt sort of like, well, Rahab the harlot from the Bible. Invited into the royal lineage of Jesus kind of thing. 

Or, I felt like if the glassware was on sale, maybe the glassware felt like the wife of Hosea: utterly disgraced and shamed on sale in the marketplace…you can finish the rest otherwise, read the story, this is supposed to be PG!  Whispers…Really! How could you? 

Yes, that is the idea. And, what happened? I was in the check out and we dropped one. It broke. Gold rimmed cup. And I though, hmmmm, that’s too bad. We threw it away. No big deal. I paused my thoughts to fill the car with three boxes of dishes. 

 I took the cups and all the dishes home. When I picked up a box, that was when it slipped from my hand and crashed onto the inside of the car. I got inside and I found that on the way a bowl had broken. Then I thought about Belshazzar and Daniel with the writing on the wall. And, how those people partied with God’s, not theirs, but God’s beautiful gold and silver cups once used for the consecration of the temple. 

Here I’d been thinking about the dishes with my physical eyes. I had just seen how beautiful they were and thought, for some things, maybe I would sell a few online and make a few extra bucks. This changed my mind and I was contrite: now I put on my spiritual eyes and looked gently at the dishes. And then I saw the wear on the dishes. Lovingly cared for like precious gold, a chalice for remembering the last supper. Other things like that, signs of wear from use. 

And, no longer were they for sale. Nope, I never had special things because we were always picking up roots. Now we finally had something special to put into a cabinet. Sell them? No! This was enough for a household, not a business reselling things for a profit!

Again, I thought of Belshazzar. He made a fatal mistake. The writing was literally on the wall for him and he thought to evade it. To escape it, without remorse, and it was too late! The patterns on the dishes were: Lilies of the Valley and Ripe Grapes on Grapevines. No, these were special dishes. Perhaps used for a supper at home after Christmas or another religious holiday. How do I know? Well, those particular patterns are symbolic in the Bible and to Christianity. 

Then I thought of the broken dish. Sometimes, people pass and we don’t understand why. Sometimes we lose friends and never understand how. Sometimes, even modern superglue or a special type of fix won’t repair beautiful china or crystal. And we throw things out. But, archaeologists literally go through thousand year old garbage piles to piece these types of things back together and find out what people valued at that time. They investigate myths and tales to literally see if they are true. 

Yet, a broken dish. Perhaps it was special to God. Perhaps those of us who are broken are special to God and that is why we are broken. Rather than let something be misused unknowingly or knowingly by God, he has broken us, or them: to prevent the misuse or further misuse of those people. Or dishes. It seems like even dishes are important to God. Much less people, else the kingdom of Babylon would not have fallen to Darius the Persian over the gold and silver from Israel’s temple. 

In remembrance of these things: I kept the broken dish in my cabinet. Not so my children can cut themselves on it or to superglue it, but to remind me that some things in life are more important than others. And, that is okay. It is okay to be broken. As long as you know why and know that Jesus loves you, regardless. 

An Update:

I have thrown out the dish that I saved for a while because it was broken. Why? Because I broke another one in part and because I didn't want to save it for so long that it became morbid. Anyways, how did I break another one? 

Well, actually, I broke it and a teapot and a vase. I moved the cabinet slowly but surely and almost tipped the entire thing! I was lucky to get off getting hit in the head with a teapot and having that break as well as a few other dishes. 

I will say, I am despondent now. But I have another spiritual thought tidbit for you: when we talk about Jesus dying on the cross, sometimes I wonder if his sacrifice of himself was literally in a spiritual way like Frankenstein. No joke here! Having experienced some healings that are of a spiritual/emotional nature, I wonder if God put us under spiritually speaking and literally took pieces of his spiritual self in order to ummm...heal us?