Broken but beautiful in his sight.

It's been a busy start to the year with lots of blessing and signs of fresh growth and fruit with the children and especially my designs. Jonathan and I have moments (still learning) of just living with our hands open and saying we trust you to fill these father with everything we need for our family and the future. We hold our agenda in an open hand before you, however good and right it seems you are welcome to take it and put something you plan there.

He knows best, He is so so good, his plans are eternal and perfect. It might feel uncomfortable right now, you might be totally out of your comfort zone, but he sees the coming fruit and the intimacy with him that comes from walking that difficult season together with him.

He allows times of being 'striped back'. Times when you cant make 'head nor tail' of what He is doing. In these times you learn to stay close, you have to return to that relationship with him first and a freedom bringing child like faith. My pride is of no use to me anyway so better to get rid of it, right? Who am I to know his ways completely, He is God after all, I am his child.

At half term Jonathan took the kids to the beach for the day, so I could work. They came back so excited with a collection of what they called beautiful jewels for me. They had searched the beach and carefully collected any sea glass they could spot. These were soft and beautiful, varying in different shades of greens and blues and translucence. The kids were so pleased with their finds for me and bubbling with endless ideas of what we could do with the sea glass. We could make pictures, make jewellery, a tiara or a crown.

At that moment I heard God speak to me clearly. These 'beautiful jewels' were once bottles, used, thrown away, broken and discarded, their purpose entirely momentary. Then they had been washed in the ocean, the sharp, jagged edges soften, covered, polished in its depths. I felt him say 'I love you like this, trust me to work out my purposes and make something beautiful at times in your life when you feel fragile, sharp or broken '.

A picture of healing, the ocean of his love washes over us, softens and soothes the sharp broken painful edges. He can take the broken pieces and make a beautiful necklace or place them as a jewel in his very own crown. We are made to display him in the way only we can, to be our own special shaped jewel washed by his love. Once broken and now placed in his crown to display his glory.

His love is relentless, reckless, deep, healing, strong, life bringing, rich, uncontrollable and furious, just like the ocean but even more so. On top of that we have forever to explore and know it!

So If your heart or the plans you had feel broken. Know he uses all things for good. Know that the bible says he knows the plans he has for us. These plans are not to harm us but to bring us hope and a future. He desires to make something beautiful out of something broken. To him you are not a fragile discarded sharp piece of glass but a precious jewel, washed in his love and placed in his crown, he plans to display you with pride that you might 'sparkle in the land' (Zechariah 9 v 16)

Stay close, listen, rest in his love, hear that he is pleased with you, know his delight over you, healing, spend time looking in his face and look forward to sparkling in his crown!