It sat on their table for decades (my whole life and then some).
After Grandma died I brought it home proudly. It reminds me of my grandparents and my childhood. I wanted it to be on my table -- kind of like the legacy of the sugar bowl!
Of course after sitting on my grandparents' table for decades and being at my home for maybe just a few months, someone broke off one of the handles. Coming to my house often means things get broken!
I was so irritated!
We fixed it with patience and super glue.
Do you know what we found out? It had been broken sometime in the past. The little top had been glued back on in its early life in Rural Sherrard, Illinois (or maybe it was before they lived in the Big White House on the Hill -- which was named after them. It's called 'Christensen Hill.").
I thought of the sugar bowl this morning after reading something Michael Card wrote:
If Jesus is truly our paradigm (means example, but paradigm sounds so much cooler) and pattern, as we confess he is, then like him we must constantly be searching for new and creative ways to give ourselves to others for
his sake . . . There
is a level of giving that we can achieve only through brokenness, but the burden is light precisely because the One who
places it on our lives never completely takes his hand from under the weight. He never stops pursuing us, even to
the very last moment of our lives.
We should do the same with others -- never stop pursuing them with love and truth and compassion and joy. Card says it doesn't require anything at all "except surrender."
Ooo, that's difficult though -- surrendering our rights to the time and money and talents and comfort God puts in our lives and give it all away through loving Him and others. I tell you, it does take some broken souls to do that impossible task. When we are broken Jesus can get through those cracks to reach that other soul.
It doesn't work too well with sugar bowls though. For a year or more Grandma's sugar bowl had only one arm attached. When broken it sat on a high shelf with its severed arm inside its belly. I was not going to lose that arm.
Did you see it took patience to fix it? It wasn't mine. Shannon took over and glued the arm back on successfully.
Once it was fixed I filled the belly with sugar and set it beside my toaster. It still hasn't made its way to the table permanently. Maybe it will. It is pretty (prettier than the silly sketch I drew).
"But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children . . . we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children." 1 Thessalonians 2:7, 11
Like a parent.
That's devotion.