Broken and Small
When the children were small a favorite springtime gift was a warm handful of golden dandelions. Sometimes it was violets or other wild flowers throughout the year.
Gifts are precious to me. Large or small, expensive or not so expensive, gifts mean someone was thinking about someone besides themselves.
A few years ago, maybe two or three years now, one of my sons gave me a Mother's Day present. I have a collection of elephants. I'm not sure how it became a thing this collecting of elephant statues, but I have added elephants and bells to my collection of dust.
When people come to visit me they sometimes get their nose out of joint when they notice the dust, but I tell them, 'no, no, leave my dust alone. I've been working on that pile there for several years now'.
Well, I don't really tell them that, but I do have elephants and bells. My present that Mother's Day was a small porcelain jade green planter elephant.
It got left sitting on my two sided counter, and in the passage of a short time it proved that my counter does indeed have a limit to what we can add to that amount of stuff that is put on the counter, and my elephant lost it's footing and fell off the counter.
No, it was irreparable, but it pained me to see a gift that was given, broken and I couldn't bear to throw it away. I've picked it up as best I could, placed the bigger pieces in place. Using Scotch tape, I taped them and eventually the smaller pieces back into what had been the form of the elephant.
If I turn it so that only the front is showing and put some pretty fake leaves and flowers in the planter no one will be able to tell...
*******
Out here in the middle of nowhere there used to be quiet and peace. The stars in the night time sky are like diamonds scattered across a dark blue velvet curtain. And the God of the universe is mighty indeed to have created something so magnificent.
I wonder at my impudence bringing to Him my pitiful gifts, as it were dandelions clutched in my warm hand. Or unlike the elephant that was whole when given to me, mine is already broken and only the Master's touch can make it whole.
Isaiah 42:2 "He will not cry, nor lift up his voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street. 3) A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench: he will bring forth justice in truth."
Isaiah 61:1 "The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;"
