Things Break (Raquel)
June 13, 2008 by sharppointythings
Things break. That’s hardly a deep thought. Things break. Moths eat cloth. Rust corrodes steel. Thieves steal valuables. (Sound familiar?) Add to the list: toddlers rip paper, floors (with a little help from gravity) shatter glass. Etc, etc, etc.
This small and obvious fact has been brought to my attention quite often lately. Like when my favorite nifty pen slips out of my bag and shatters on the floor almost before I knew it had dropped. And I just sigh, because it’s a familiar sound that doesn’t surprise me at all. But for some reason I stand there and think about how often I drop things. Or how often my tongue trips and the words slip away and just a split second too late I try to catch them, but can only wait to hear the shatter on the floor.
And as I look back at all the things I’ve broken I can only wonder why there weren’t more. As often as my tongue slips, why do have any friends left? And I realize how often God must step in at that vital split second before the friendship shatters, and He catches it, and then hands it back to let me slip and drop it all over again.
And I sweep the shards of ceramic into the trash without a second glance.
Great imagery, Raquel. It’s so true that we destroy so much with our words. I’m looking forward to the day when my tongue will be purified and only beautiful things will fall from it. There’s one more reason Heaven sounds so good.
If I stopped speaking to everyone who said something mean to me, I couldn’t even talk to myself. And I’d miss those conversations!