A Grace Filled Detour

So my coffee maker has been acting up for a few months and some mornings it just refuses to grant me that sweet 'nectar of the gods'. It makes me pretty grumpy. (First world problems, I know.) And it used to be that with a great deal of frustration I would drive over to the Dunkin' Donuts near our house, bedhead and all. I really didn't like having to leave the house for a coffee. It was a major interruption in the routine. But then one morning I took a turn, coffee in hand, when a pretty green road seemed to beckon me. So I turned and I drove. And I drove some more. That morning I dumped the routine...and then a strange thing began to happen: There came another morning that I smiled instead when my coffee maker refused to do its job, because this little inconvenience had become a means of grace in my life. I got to drive and find beautiful places to stop and drink my coffee, and think and pray. And breathe... Isn't that how it is with broken things? They can become avenues of grace that we would have missed if everything had gone as planned.

This morning I sat in front of this field for a while in the gentle, spring rain, with birds chirping and swooping joyfully. Off in the distance a little, old house was caving in at its center and the ivy had begun to climb her cracking walls. I remembered the seasons of my life that looked more like this crumbling cottage than my broken coffee maker. Seasons where I struggled to see His grace meeting me there at all. Where everything fell to pieces. But today I sat here and I watched her across the billowy field, all set apart and peaceful.

Surrendered.

Beautiful.

Brokenness can lead to beauty when it leads you to rest at the feet of the One who holds the breaking and the mending. And maybe it's the broken things that know how to embrace rest...because they've had to embrace the task of surrendering to Him.