Don't Touch and It Won't Break

“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.” - 2 Corinthians 4:7

When my daughter was around 4 years old, she knocked a clay pot off a shelf in a craft store, shattering it in a hundred little pieces. She was mortified - well, as mortified as a 4 year old can be. The deer in the headlights look on her face told that story.

I remember that she didn’t quite understand what was going on when we had her tell the store clerk what happened and offer to pay for the broken pot. But she remember that moment even now, 14 years later. She remembers how upset and embarrassed she was, the fear of being punished, that she had to help clean up the pieces. 

It wasn’t a priceless heirloom, so it was a little easier to use it as an object lesson for her -  ‘don’t touch and it won’t break’. 

And isn’t that true of us every day?

Don’t touch and it won’t break.

2 Corinthians 4:7 makes it clear that we are like “fragile clay jars”. And inside of us we have the “great treasure” of God’s love, his “light shining in our hearts”. 

But the light can’t shine for others until our hearts are broken for them. 

There is so much brokenness in our world today. And it’s so easy to close ourselves off from it, to turn away from what we see of the pain and suffering of others - but as Christ followers especially, aren’t we supposed to see that? To be moved by it?

To let it break our hearts?   

Instead, so many times, we don’t let it touch us - we turn off the tv because the story is too sad - and in our 24 hour news cycle, it’s too much. And it invades our illusion of our safe little bubble. 

We close our hearts to the pain of others because it requires so much of us to absorb it; to feel it and be broken by it. 

Don’t touch and it won’t break.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s how Christ wants us to live - to keep his light and love locked up in our fragile clay hearts. Protected by the bubble wrap of our safe lives. 

We are called to touch others with his love, his hope, his grace, kindness and mercy. 

With his story of redemption and forgiveness. 

Our purpose here is to let our hearts break for the ones he himself was broken (and bled and died) for. 

You may not be called to a far away place to share his love, but there’s someone in your own backyard who is desperate for it today. 

Maybe it’s time to touch…and break…and shine the light of Christ into their dark place.