“But what does it look like?” a friend asked me, when we talked about my ‘dust to gold blog. “all good and I get the idea … but in reality … what does it look like in someone’s life, in your life?”. a big question that cannot be answered simply and I guess, in the context of each individual’s life, the answer will be different. but I had a go at explaining. INDIVIDUALITY OF FORM and UNIQUE IDENTITY remain. we are all unique, made that way to serve a special and unique purpose in a specific time and place. our form, our design (history), colour (personality), our purpose, don’t change. we are made to be a specific vessel to carry/reflect a specific aspect of our creator. our brokenness comes as we struggle with and in the world … in that battle to sort out right, wrong, values and traits that define who we are in a world that calls us to be everything … an everything that is constantly changing. GOD CONTINUES TO SUSTAIN, REFINE and RESTORE us while TRANSFORMING us. our cracks and breaks weaken us, make us feel like we have less value, that we are less useful. so, ‘he restores us with his gold’ is the image I like to hold. holy kintsugi. this doesn’t hide our breaks but rather it highlights them, and it increases our value. I am restored with gold! what this does for me (and for you) is it makes my cracks scream out ‘I am a broken man’ and if makes yours do the same … and this VULNERABILITY gives us connection points. It shows us that none of us can be everything. it shows us that all of us have struggles. our golden cracks become our equalisers. yet there is one more thing. when we read in Revelation 21:21 (in the Bible), we find that, in the new heaven, the street is ‘of gold, as pure as transparent glass’. now here is the amazing thing … the thing I love best. in the new heaven, the metal that we value most highly in this world, gold, is the material that is used for road tar. now does that mean that God is restoring us with road tar? no, not at all. God is using the most precious metal here on earth, but this is not reason for us to become proud. quite the opposite actually. when we see the value of gold here as compared to its value in the new heaven, we begin to understand that God sees things different to us. and when we start looking at the way he looks at things we begin to see that it’s not material wealth that is important but rather a richness of character. the things that make you, you. the things that are honourable. the things that draw you to others and others to you. and this is where we start using words like love and integrity and caring and generosity and hospitality … this is where we start hearing words like kindness and gentleness and goodness. these words seem like a contradiction to how the world measures value and success … and, in my understanding, there is only one way to accessing these traits … it is through HUMILITY. God has demonstrated his love for us in many ways, but I think his greatest demonstration of love was/is his humility. that he willingly left everything to become like us, among us. he submitted himself to an undeserved and unjust death. humility is not seen as strong, but I challenge anyone to find a virtue that requires more strength to practice than humility. humility, meekness, gentleness, kindness are not traits of the weak but rather of the strong … and maybe, the traits of even the strongest. it is when we are most humbled that we become most aware, when we are most aware, that we become most grateful, when we are most grateful that we become most generous and merciful, and it is when we become most generous and merciful that we become most caring, most hospitable, most gentle and kind and most loving. God’s golden restoration sets us on a path to seeing things from his heart’s perspective, connects to each other and places us all in his hands so that he can continue the work he has to do, in us, for us and through us. Turning us all from dust … to gold …

this is the beginning of what this means to me … what does it mean to you? what do you see?