by Judy Bevilacqua
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;a broken and contrite heart. Psalm 51:17
I thought about the idea for many years: a large mosaic that would someday grace our outdoor entranceway. Finally, about 2-1/2 years ago, I eagerly began the work. My daughter Gina helped me create the design. It was colorful and Italian in spirit, bearing the greeting: “Benvenuto,” Italian for “welcome.” Hospitality is important to me, so it was work I believed in. It started out innocently enough, as, I suppose most life-changing events do. My ignorance was bliss. Enlarging the design and mounting it on strong wood wasn’t difficult. I had been years collecting broken tiles and dishes. (We’re hard on dishes at our house!) And I had even brought tiles home from a vacation to a pottery center in central Mexico.
So the work began: hammers, tile-cutters, and goggles. There was blood and band-aids, nicked knuckles and frustration over cutting problems and confusion over glues. But it was satisfying work…even if slow. PAIN-fully slow. Oh, did I mention slow? In my mind, I had the mosaic grouted, framed and hung by the following Spring. But only a few square inches were completed by then. Other priorities and duties sapped my strength and filled my brief leisure hours after work. Before long I couldn’t even see the mosaic, it was buried under piles of rubble and debris in the utility room, neglected and forgotten.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” Proverbs 13 says. It’s true. My heart was sad. Life was hard. My employer for whom I’d cared for over 19 years, was failing. Then suddenly, she was gone….and with that a sudden retirement. Not quite as I’d imagined, abrupt and aborted. I felt oddly unprepared for what I thought would be a hopeful season – now so tainted with sadness. Then illness followed, 60 days of a mysterious virus no physician could determine. I languished all February and March in my plaid pajamas on the couch, my hearing all but gone. This event fell during Lent last year. Perfect! Then in early Summer, I learned of my mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. And late Summer, brought the devastating loss of my 5 month old grandson…..and the world turned inside out. All I knew of faith was tested. Deep underneath all this debris, in the darkness, lay all my broken pieces. I was the mosaic. Life was imitating art. God not only held the glue. He was the glue. But still I was “undone” – with no means or energy to make sense of it. My heart lay dormant for many long months.
Then….one morning 2 months ago, I awoke to yet another gray day. Only inside me, on this morning, there was light and color, and an unexpected friend: energy! I didn’t know what to make of this. Where did it come from? Oh, Grace! Just when I thought you’d lost my address! The first thing I did was go to the utility room and turn on the space heater. I couldn’t wait to uncover the mosaic and begin moving my broken pieces. I longed to coax out a pattern in the chaos: a sky and some hills, a dragonfly and a salamander, flowers and trees and wine grapes, ripe for harvest. Two Sundays ago, our scripture reading was a love song: “See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come…” I could only smile knowingly and give thanks and praise to God!
And so this Season of Lent draws to that hard familiar close. Christ is crucified, His body broken for us. There are pieces strewn all over the ground: 30 pieces of silver, pieces of broken dreams, shattered shards of hope, fractured bits of faith. And the Father-Creator’s hand moves over all that is formless and void, dark and sad and deep. Once again, the Spirit of God brings beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, inexplicable light of Resurrection after Lenten darkness, wholeness after brokenness, and out of chaos, brilliant clarity in the Light of Christ. All this from broken pieces. Alleluia!
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life - (or maybe a mosaic!)
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