Shattered
It was a busy day with several more on the horizon. It seemed like a wise decision to prepare in advance for our meals.
I took the chicken breasts out of the freezer and waited for the right time to pound, season, and arrange each plump piece in the nine-by-thirteen-inch Pyrex casserole dish. The oven temperature was just right to cook the chicken to perfection in twenty-five minutes. I carefully placed the dish with the raw poultry on the middle rack, turned the timer to twenty-five, and set about getting ready to be on a panel of authors, sharing my writing journey with others. I looked forward to the event, although I don’t consider myself to be of the calibre of the other panel participants, some full-time writers.
It was time to cook rice to make the stir-fry dinner, one of my favourite home-made dishes. Had I forgotten anything?
I pulled the placemats from the drawer and laid them on the counter, where Bob and I sit on barstools to share each meal together.
Plates, silver, glasses of water, salt and pepper—all ready for the delicious offering soon to come out of the oven.
The timer beeped. Grabbing oven mitts from the top drawer by the stove, I opened the door to be greeted by the aroma of caramelized drippings. What a waste, since there was no time to make gravy. Still, the chicken would be delicious to complete the veggie stir-fry.
Carefully, I reached in with my oversized mitts and took the dish in both hands. As I set the burning hot casserole on the burner, glass shattered across the cupboard, the door, and inside the oven. In the middle of the mess, my chicken breasts lay embedded with glass. The corner pieces of the dish maintained some shape, but the remainder was in tiny slivers.
Picking up the hundreds of pieces, sweeping, vacuuming—all the while in sock feet—provided a little miracle. I did not sustain a single cut or injury.
My time-saving effort turned into a time-eating exercise. An hour later, I sat with the others and prayed, “Help.”
The Oxford Dictionary defines shattered as broken into many pieces.
As I looked at the damage, I pondered the times I felt like what I saw before me. Shards of brokenness. Perhaps you have been shattered too: by depression, by divorce, by loneliness, by financial ruin and failed relationships. The evidence of lives damaged or destroyed by the sharp edges of loss, sin, and pain is everywhere.
Picking up the fragments of our broken lives is God’s job. Before the foundation of the world He knew every day that we would live. And He not only promised to clean up the mess, but to gift us with a life of abundance even in the middle of it.
