The Chosen Cup - A Short Story with Huge Meaning
If you have not read “The Chosen Cup - A Short Christmas Story”, please take a moment and read that short story first. It will help this post make more sense to you.
Henry’s story of the precious cup is just that, a story, though as I wrote it I thought it fit nicely into the time of a Dickens' novel and I could hear and see every part of it before my eyes. There is, however, a truer than true story before you. The reality of “The Chosen Cup,” is that it’s a story all about you. You are the story, you are the “Chosen Cup”!
You were a perfect cup designed by and for the King of Kings, God Himself. God’s hands carefully crafted and created each part with meaning, purpose, and vast love. Every single part of you was crafted by Him with you in mind, His image and workmanship were upon you. You were so perfect that God could look at you and see His fingerprints upon you. You were an object of His great joy and love. Just existing brought Him great joy. You literally didn’t need to do anything and God had the biggest smile on His face.
It all started with Adam and Eve in a garden paradise, created for God’s glory; they cared for this paradise, taking time to walk and talk with the Lord. More than the paradise that it was, God created us to walk and live in paradise with Him. Truly, it was all absolute perfection and beauty by the hand of God.
We might be walking in that garden right now, but it was in that garden paradise that humanity fell from its privileged place, just as the cup fell from the shelf. I fell, you fell, we all fell. Unlike the cup which fell because it was knocked off by some rambunctious kids, we fell because we chose to fall. When we fell from our place of privileged perfection we were shattered, broken to pieces, unrecognizable from what we were created to be. We disobeyed God and from a favored perch on His palace shelf, we fell. In falling you were shattered to pieces. You spend life trying to put yourself together. We’re so broken that only a master craftsman could put us together. Someone who knows you to the depths.
There we lay in pieces beyond repair, or so we thought. There was always hope that one would come along, see value in those “worthless” pieces. One who would pick up those pieces, and through great sacrifice and work, put you back together to make you whole again, as you should have always been from the beginning. Like Henry, who went to find a broom to sweep up the mess, God gets the broom and sweeps up our mess. He not only sweeps us up with tears in His eyes of what we’ve done, but also with tears of joy for what He’s going to do. He had joy when He made you and when He’s done putting all your pieces back together He has even more joy.
What came at Christmas was One who came to heal you, to restore you, to place you again on the shelf of the King, to bring you back into a right relationship with Him. At great sacrifice, Jesus gave up His own standing in Heaven, to disrupt His relationship there, to come to our broken, shattered world, for your sake. The restoration of the relationship would come at great cost, His life, to restore you to your created place. The transgression is yours, but the restoration is His.
From the moment He picks you up and you accept Him as your Lord and Savior, He starts putting you back together again. Slowly and painstakingly, piece by piece, God uses the rest of your life to repair you, not repair you to what you were, but to repair you to what you were meant to be in perfection. Unlike Henry repairing the cup with gold, God repairs you with Himself, putting His Spirit in your life to work in your life from the inside out. He takes the rest of your lifetime to make you into His image.
When that last repair is complete, the Lord takes you from this world and places you on the shelf in His palace for a glorious future eternity in His presence, in His kingdom, Heaven itself. What a glorious day that will be with the Lord!
Christmas is all about the start of repairing that relationship, of putting you, not back on the shelf of the world, but on the shelf of the King. I pray you will allow Him to sweep you up and put you back together better than ever! He wants to restore you, will you allow Him to? Praying for a blessed year ahead for you and your walk with the Lord, as your pieces are being infused with His perfect love!