Of Beauty and Brokenness

Isn’t this butterfly beautiful?

And this one, too?

No, they’re not the same butterfly, though they are both swallowtails. If you look closely at the second, he’s missing a part of his hind wing (tail), the tip on the bottom left side.

One butterfuly is broken; the other is not. But both flutter and dance in the breeze, displaying a beauty all their own.

The culture we live in — that airbrushed culture of fake perfection — says that only the unblemished can be beautiful, only the perfect can dance on life’s breezes.

I beg to differ.

I scream to differ.

Look at what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corithians 12:9-10, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

When Paul wrote this, God had just finished speaking to him in response to Paul’s plea for God to remove his “thorn”: “My grace is sufficient for you,” God said, “for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Paul can delight in his brokenness and weakness because of God’s sufficient grace.

Our culture denies the reality of our need for God’s grace. It denies that every one of us is broken (some just hide it well). So it rejects imperfection and sniffs at brokenness. It would have us be ashamed.

Rather than viewing our brokenness (whatever it is) with shame, we can embrace it as an opportunity to rely on God’s grace in ways we wouldn’t have without being broken. We can accept it as a means by which the world can seen God’s work in and through us. We can see it as a means to display God’s glory and beauty to those around us.

You see, Perfect People think they don’t need God. The broken know they do. And rejoice.

Why? Because we know God’s grace is sufficient to carry a broken swallowtail. We know His grace is sufficient to carry us. And we know that broken butterflies and broken people alike can fly with beauty as we rely on Him.

‘Til next time,
Joan

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