The other day I was on the couch flipping the channels and I came across this show, an antique show. You know, the one where people bring in all of their old junk, hoping it’s secretly worth all kinds of money, and then the appraiser looks it over, and tells them the price they can expect to get. And this one guy brings in these two really cool looking glass bottles, like vases, and he has no clue where they came from, but he wants to know if they’re worth anything. So the appraiser points out a few key things he notices, and it turns out these are like glass vases from China that were made in the 1700s!. So the guy is thinking he’s really going to bank on these things. But then the appraiser notices a few other things. The bottom of one of these vases, which isn’t even really visible anyway, has a few chips, and is kind of rough and worn – you’d expect that after 300 hundred of years wouldn’t you? And on the other one there’s a chip out of the lip on the top. To me it hardly seemed like much, but this expert is telling this guy that this greatly reduces the value of these beautiful, old vases. A few little chips, a few little imperfections destroys the value of those old vases. I guess no one would want to put their flowers in these less than perfect vases.

Kind of like life in a way, isn’t it? I mean, nobody wants anyone else to see their broken places; their flaws, or their imperfections. I mean I hate to even look inside, at my own, let alone let other people see them. Maybe it’s just part of life in our image driven culture, – you know, “Never let them see you sweat.” I want everyone to see me as that perfect container, the beautiful vase that’s just all put together, ‘cause if there’s a chip or a flaw, then what does that say about my value? I’d much rather just cover up those ugly places; put some kind of decoration over top of the cracks. And we get pretty good at that don’t we – we get pretty good at decorating our jars, managing the image we put out there for everyone to see. It’s like there’s just something deep down in us as humans that makes us want to be seen as acceptable, valuable enough to be embraced.

But have you ever had one of those times, though, when it’s like you can’t fake it, or cover up your brokenness anymore? Despite everything you’ve done to build your beautiful vase, you take a hard look inside and there’s this painful realization…that the vase is just cracked – it’s broken. And some of these cracks are deep, and this brokenness is really painful; it’s kind of like every thing is collapsing around you, and like nothing’s ever going to be put together right again.

There’s a really profound scripture in the Bible that says God makes his light shine in our hearts and that this light is like a great treasure. “But…”, “but…” it says, He pours this treasure into clay jars. God puts his treasure into clay jars. Now think about this – God’s treasure is beyond anything we can imagine. Another scripture says that it takes every single atom of this incredibly huge universe to tell the story of how beautiful this treasure is. In fact, it says, God’s treasure is more beautiful than we can even dream up. Now I like to think I have a pretty big imagination. And I can imagine some incredibly beautiful treasure. But God’s treasure goes way beyond whatever I can imagine. And so like if you’re God, and you had all of this amazingly beautiful, amazingly valuable treasure wouldn’t you want to put it in the best possible container you could find? I mean when they wanted to display the hope diamond – one of the biggest blue diamonds in existence – at the Smithsonian a company built this huge, beautiful display area and case. It’s the state of the art in security, but it’s beautiful too – it fits the kind of treasure that it holds. So if you’re God and you have this outlandish treasure don’t you want a vessel that’s equally beautiful to hold it? That’s the way we think about God sometimes isn’t it? That you have to be really good, perfect, and all put together in order to be acceptable, and loved by him. One woman said to me the other day, “I’m not good enough to go to church.” But that’s not the way it is. Scripture says it’s like if God were at that antique show that day he’d pass by all of those perfect, mint condition jars to find the one that was chipped, and worn, and rather ugly. And then God puts his most precious treasure into it. It says God puts his treasure into people who are like simple clay jars.

In that day clay jars were like the cheap, everyday tableware – you know like how most homes have the fine, expensive, beautiful china that gets used maybe twice a year, and then the common everyday stuff – it’s not specially beautiful, or expensive, or fancy. That’s what the clay jars were back in the day. That – simple, non-fancy, chipped, cracked clay jars – is where God puts His treasure! God, what are you thinking? That doesn’t make sense does it? Not the way we do things in this world. Why would God do something like that?

Maybe…it’s because He wants us to actually see his treasure. So every time a piece chips off from that clay pot, or when a crack splits down the side of the pot…that’s when we’re able to catch a glimpse inside the jar – that it’s no ordinary clay jar anymore; there’s a valuable treasure inside of it. Do you have some brokenness in your life? Something that you just can’t stand to look at? I do, we all do, and it is hard, it’s painful to look on the ugliness of our clay jar sometimes, isn’t it? And sometimes we cry out “God why does it have to be this way?” But maybe it’s all this ugliness in our lives that invites us to look beyond the jar, beyond ourselves, to receive the treasure, and see the beauty of God. Maybe it’s in our brokenness that we get to see God most clearly.

You know, the best thing about that scripture, though, is that the brokenness isn’t the end of the story. It goes on to say that once we catch a glimpse of this light…this treasure of God…the clay jar of our souls is transformed – it’s changed. It says that the treasure inside – the light – takes that weak, easily crushed clay pot, and gives it an amazing strength so that even though it’s being chipped and cracked from pressure on every side…it will never be completely crushed and destroyed. And then we’ll know for sure the only way it could be surviving is because of that beautiful treasure of God inside.

So do you want to see God? Do you want to see his beauty? God’s beauty is seen most clearly through the ugly brokenness of our lives. So may you invite God to fill your clay jar with His treasure.