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At Metro Camp, we spent a lot of time talking about how we could “SHINE” for Jesus. Campers were taught that they were created by God on purpose and for a purpose. Their purpose is to glorify God, or to shine for Him. However, we all have a big problem. We are ALL broken. The children all understood this concept completely. We are all broken by our own sin, as well as by the sins of others and a broken world. When something is broken, it can’t fulfill its purpose. We used a clay pot to illustrate this problem.

A clay pot was created, by its creator, to hold a plant. The pot can hold the dirt, seed, root system, and even the plant itself. When the plant grows, it produces fruit of some kind so that the plant can reproduce. That is a lot of responsibility for a pot, isn’t it? But the pot can handle it! Unless the pot is broken.

Can a clay pot broken into many pieces fulfill its purpose to hold a plant? No way. (The children at camp agreed, by the way.) This is where our story took a turn. That broken clay pot is a lot like we are. We were created to shine for Jesus, to bring him glory. When sin breaks us, our relationship with God is broken. We can no longer be used effectively for our purpose! Because we could all identify with being broken, we each took a piece of the pot and wrote our name on it. Now we had a lot of broken pot pieces that represented our group at Metro Camp.

Being broken is a sad place to be in. Just like the pot cannot somehow mend itself, we cannot repair our broken state on our own. For the pot, someone bigger must work to fix it. Each small group took their section of the broken pot and worked meticulously to repair it. The repairs took a long time, and left a few gaps, but in the end, each section was completed. Then after the campers had gone to sleep, a couple of leaders took all the sections and put them back together to form a pot (somewhat miraculously, I must say).

Like the pot, we cannot fix our own brokenness. It takes the master creator to put us back together. His name is Jesus. When Jesus Christ came to this earth, He took all our sins upon himself as he died upon the cross. He then rose back to life on the third day, defeating death and sin for all eternity! Our brokenness is repaired when we put our faith and trust in that amazing gift of Jesus! That is how we are restored! It is not “somewhat miraculous.” It is the most beautiful, amazing, miraculous gift of grace ever given!

When we showed the campers the repaired broken pot, they were truly amazed that we got all those pieces put back together. But…they did notice all the cracks and little missing pieces. It wasn’t perfect again. They were right. Yet that is the really cool part!! For you see…

When God fixes our broken places, there are still scars and marks and sometimes even holes. But it is in those places that the light of Jesus really shines through! Take a look at that pot again, but this time look at it in a dark room and light a candle inside of it. You can see all the places the light SHINES through! That is just like US!

None of us are too old, too young, too dumb, too lacking in Bible knowledge, too shy, too BROKEN to be used for our purpose – to glorify God! Every single one of us has a story to tell and our very scars tell the story of how Jesus redeemed us. Don’t let your past, your hurts, your sins keep you from shining for Jesus. Those are the very parts of your life that may change someone else’s! Go out and SHINE for him!

John 12:46 “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.”

Matthew 5:14-15 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light everyone in the house.”