I've always loved to watch children create. Whether they are building a castle out of Duplos to fend off an impending dragon attack or fingerpainting a work of abstract wonder, their imaginations don't often know the limitations that years on this hard earth can shackle us with. Kids give themselves freely and unabashedly to whatever they do and there is a great joy about them…in both their thinking and their doing. It's a wonder to behold.
I often think that Creation must've been such a moment for God – that with child-like wonder and joy He spoke things into being. "Bunnies!" perhaps He said, and then He chuckled at them as they appeared and began hopping about. But those are thoughts for another time.
Last night, I received a private message on Facebook from some very dear friends of mine. Their daughter, a lovely girl just seven years of age, had come across one of the promotional cards I had printed up to help spread the word about "I Am A Broken House." The card (as you'll see below) bears the image of the same house that appears on the book's front cover with the simple tagline: Broken can be beautiful. 
If you've not read the work, you might not see the connection between that slogan and the poetry, but the overall work points to the fact that we are (every one of us) broken – by loss, by sin, by shame, by cowardice and more – and yet, by grace, we remain…and there's something beautiful about that. So the tagline, a last minute addition, seemed appropriate. Every time someone orders a signed copy, I try to stick a few of those cards in the book so they can pass them on to friends. At any rate, this wondrous little girl came across the card while driving somewhere with her parents, and…well, I'll just let her mother tell the rest of that story.
Yesterday we were driving around and (our daughter) found your "A Broken House" business card. She read it aloud and asked what it was. We told her that it was from your book of poetry and she began her own poem..here it is:
A Broken House
Broken can be beautiful
Broken can be dark
Broken can be like the stars on a late Sunday nightBroken can be warm
Broken can be a rainbow
Broken can be a nice little parkAnd Broken can be beautiful
Folks, I confess that I was not only amazed by the girl's talent and insight (so unsullied and unfettered by this world) but utterly humbled that a silly little slogan I used as a promotional tool could inspire within her such a work of beauty. What surprised me the most, though, was the great welling up of hope I felt. As cruel and as broken as this world can be – and as we can be – we see the hope and joy and wonder in our children and remember that God, too, takes joy in His creation and finds wonder in each poem of a person. No story is so bad it cannot be rewritten. No structure so complex the mind of a child cannot build it out of Lego blocks and imagination. No song so difficult that a child cannot make up a new version and sing it with all his might. The Hope of Glory is alive and pulsing in the creativity of our children. May they remind us all of the childlike wonder of our great Creator and the delight He takes in His creation. We may be broken, but "broken can be a rainbow."
J
