God Picks Up the Pieces

What image do you have of God? Most of us have several. Maybe you see God as the gentle shepherd, or the strong tower we run to in the storm. One image that I have of God is that of a God who picks up the broken pieces of our lives. God never gives up on all of us who are imperfect people—people who mess up, who have broken lives and haven’t a clue as to how to put the pieces back together. He takes one piece at a time and begins to make something out of the brokenness of our lives.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Children of Israel in the wilderness. God had given them his Commandments to help them know how to live, but they broke them. This culminated in the fabrication and worship of a golden calf. When Moses came down from the mountain carrying the first set of the Ten Commandments and saw the disappointing results of their sin, he threw the tablets to the ground. The broken pieces symbolized their disobedience and broken relationship with God. However, God didn’t give up on the Israelites. He still wanted his people to have his law. He invited Moses to ascend the mountain a second time where he gave a second set of the Commandments to his people. I love the image we see here of God’s willingness to pick up the pieces of that broken relationship and renew his covenant with his people. So he told Moses to make a fresh set of tablets and come up the mountain. Here is a picture of God picking up the pieces and making something new out of the broken relationships.

“So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the Lord had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. 5 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord” (Exodus 34:4-5).

I am struck with the words, Then the Lord came down. No matter how high we ascend, God has to come down to us for there to be any contact. No matter how good we try to be, God has to come down to our level. God did the stooping in this encounter with Moses and the children of Israel. However, the greatest act of humility happened at the cross when Jesus stooped down to save us. We broke God’s commandments, but God stooped so low as to send his son to restore the broken relationship.

There are so many people today who suffer from fractured relationships. There are marriages on the rocks, sons and daughters who don’t speak to their parents, and brothers and sisters that are at odds with each other. As terrible as these broken relationships are, the greatest brokenness is when a man or women is cut off from God. The God of the Bible stooped to pick up the pieces for his people Israel, and he is still doing that today. When God puts the pieces back together vertically, we begin to mend our horizontal relationships, too.