Broken Ornaments

Someone said to me today, "Friendship is like a glass ornament, once it is broken it can rarely be put back together exactly the same way". They didn’t know who said it but it surely seems to be true. But I wonder if they are supposed to be back together exactly the same way. It seems that there was something wrong if it got broken in the first place even if it was accidental. But once broken it will never be the same. That is not to say this is not good, sometimes it be even better. It just will not be the same. Often there are pieces missing, even if they are small and so it can never be the same.
But it can be put back together with the help and the power of God and His love and the willingness of friends to extend grace as well as to seek and to give forgiveness. Often this is hard because there is a lot of self and flesh that can be involved in one or both parties in the relationship. In some cases forgiveness can only be sought when a hurt has been identified. It also takes acknowledgment that a hurt has been done. It also takes extending grace, not just the grace we would want from others but the grace we have already received from God. We may not want grace from others but we know that everything we receive from God is by grace. We deserve nothing by our own virtue and what we do deserve, by His mercy we are spared.
Going back to the subject of a restored but fractured friendship. It can be put back together by the glue of God’s love and can actually be a thing of beauty because, even though it has been rebuilt or repaired, it is still His handiwork. It reminds me of a time when Lynda and had broken a vase or something and was just going to throw it away, our daughter asked her not to and said, “Mom, I want those things that you have broken and put back together because the fact that you put them back together meant that they were important to you.”
I guess our willingness to restore a friendship, even when we know it will never be the same depends on how important the friendship was to us to begin with. Too often we throw things away without even trying to fix them or they have been broken a few times before and we don’t think they are worth it any more and we actually throw away a great treasure. When my children were small and they would break things, they would bring them to me to fix it. It may have only looked like a trinket to others but to them it was a treasure. Sometimes they had tried themselves and made a mess of things but with confidence in my abilities they would say, “Daddy, will you please fix this?” Perhaps many more friendships would be salvaged if we would go to God and ask, “Abba, Father, will you fix this please?