A picture of redemption

By my cursory calculations, we go through crayons at the rate of about 312 each year. This means that throughout the year I find approximately 1,248 broken crayon pieces on the floor (or in jeans pockets or on the kitchen counter or in the dustbuster or in the toy box or the cupboards.... etc., etc).   And thanks to my most recent toddler to hit the crayon-peeling stage, the rate of acceleration from whole-crayon to broken-crayon has been greatly increased lately.

Finding broken crayons everywhere has always added just a touch more disappointment to my day... feeling the waste and the entropy-ness of it all.  But not this year!!  Several months ago, my artistic friend Deb mentioned that if we saved a lot of broken crayon pieces, she could show me how to do some sort of "batik-ing" project with the kids. I had, and still have, no idea what that means, but it sounded intriguing enough to cause me to start collecting the pieces!

So now on my counter we have this:

...and now when I find a broken crayon piece, it adds a little bit of joy to my day instead! 

Now the pieces have a purpose, a plan, a way to be redeemed, in the hopes that someday they will be a part of something beautiful.

And silly as this example is, it represents to me a picture of our redemption.  Yes, we're broken, not whole as we were meant to be.  But we're being collected in God's great kingdom, which has some beauty of its own as all of our colorfulness mixes together.  And someday we'll be part of something even more spectacularly beautiful.  Fully Redeemed!

So I'm happy to find the broken crayon pieces in all the random places (except the clothes dryer).... Now if I could just find something to do with all the little paper pieces I find left behind by my Toddler Crayon-Peeler...