The Broken Shard

Linda Sue Park wrote an award-winning book that I loved to share with my students. A Single Shard is a boy's journey to take a tiny shard of ceramic pottery to the emperor's master potter, on behalf of the boy's town's potter. The man hopes to be chosen to create a pot for the emperor and sends the boy with the pot. Sort of like a contest. The pot is broken in route, and the boy debates continuing at all, but his sense of honor and responsibility overrides the fear of censure and condemnation. When he hands the single shard to the master potter, the potter can tell instantly the skill and talent it took to create the finished pot. From a single shard.

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What do we know about fine china? It took skill to create the beautiful tea set, and it is worth the cost. It is valuable, and so it is used for special occasions. Your daily cup of coffee is poured into harder, thicker ceramic; you don't use the delicate, expensive stuff for every day. If you drop a ceramic tea cup on a tile floor, it is going to shatter.

And then it is useless. It is only good for trash.

That is what the little boy believed about the single shard of the broken pottery he carried. But he was wrong.

The master didn't see the broken shard as a useless piece of clay. He saw the skill and the beauty of the pot as a whole. He knew what it had been.

In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul uses the analogy of a clay vessel to remind us that we are inherently weak.

We are vulnerable, no doubt about it. We are weighed down by worry, overwhelmed by circumstances, shattered by the actions of other people. But...

But we are not crushed, hopeless, or destroyed. And the Master does not see a useless shard. He sees the beauty of the whole. You are His beautiful, priceless, valuable masterpiece.