Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the broken pieces with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold. The result is a unique work of art made even more beautiful with bands of the precious metal running through it. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as valuable history rather than something to disguise and hide.

Just as Kintsugi makes broken pottery into a unique, one-of-a-kind new piece of pottery, unconditional love takes the broken pieces of our lives and transforms us into someone new. The unconditional love that we receive is the gold that puts us back together. We no longer need to hide our cracks but can recognize them as parts of our history that have been made whole.

I have found this type of unconditional love at MCCGSL. I have seen people broken by the conditional love of family, friends, and churches, transformed when they realize that God loves them as they are, not in spite of who they are. Where do we get the ability to love unconditionally? Accepting the unconditional love offered by God gives us the ability to unconditionally love and forgive both ourselves and others. In the book of Psalms, David writes in chapter 139 verses 13 and 14, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful. I know that full well.”