Beauty from Brokenness

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” —Rumi

Over twenty years ago, I got some advice from a fellow pastor that I have ignored ever since.  

We were talking about preaching, and he had some criticisms of the way I shared my doubts, fears, mistakes, and brokenness in some of my sermons.  

He told me that I shouldn't be so vulnerable in front of the congregation about my struggles, and that doing so undermined my pastoral identity with them.  Then he said something very telling: 

"Never let them see the cracks in your armor."  

I felt like there was something entirely off about that approach, but I never really could articulate why until some time later, when I read a poem by the 13th-century poet Rumi, and the line that is quoted above: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” 

I quickly substituted "crack" for "wound" and found the very reason the advice I was given was off the mark.  

We spend much of our lives trying to hide our cracks—the fragile places, the stories we’d rather keep covered. We polish, protect, and pretend so that others won’t see where we’ve been bruised. Yet over and over, Scripture reminds us that God’s light doesn’t shine through perfection—it shines through the broken places.

Paul writes that “we have this treasure in jars of clay, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and not to us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7) The metaphor is intentional: we are fragile, imperfect vessels through whom the glory of God gleams. Our weakness becomes the very stage upon which God’s grace performs its greatest miracles.

Brokenness is not the end of the story—it’s the soil of redemption. Isaiah 61 declares that God brings “beauty from ashes, gladness instead of mourning, praise instead of despair.” This is not poetic optimism; it is resurrection truth. The God who raised Jesus from the dead still brings life out of what feels ruined and lost. Every scar, every failure, every grief can become a portal through which grace enters the world.

But this kind of transformation requires honesty. We can’t receive healing if we refuse to acknowledge our wounds. When we finally bring our pain into the light—when we confess our need, admit our hurt, or dare to forgive—we make space for God to create something new. The Japanese art of kintsugi repairs broken pottery with veins of gold, making it more beautiful for having been broken. God does the same with us.

Maybe you’re carrying a wound that feels too deep, too defining. Maybe you wonder if it can ever become anything but a scar. Hear this truth: God is not finished with your story. The crack in your heart may yet be the place where the light gets in—and through you, into the lives of others.

Takeaway: We are not ruined by our cracks; we are made radiant through them.

Prayer

God of mercy and mending,
thank You for meeting me in the places that feel too broken to fix.
Teach me to trust that Your grace can create beauty from my ruins.
Let my scars become windows through which others can glimpse Your light,
and remind me that nothing in Your hands is ever wasted.
Amen.

Reflection Questions

1. What cracks or wounds in your life have allowed God’s light to shine through?

2. How might you see your scars not as shame, but as stories of redemption?

3. Where do you sense God creating beauty in what once felt broken?