Love in the Cracks of Life’s Road

The roads were icy, so I looked down as I trudged along on my usual morning walk.

Our roads are a mess here. Many cracks, many potholes. This snowy, icy winter has added even more damage.

As I walked, I suddenly stopped.  Something caught my eye.

The shape of a particular crack arrested me. It looked just like …  a heart!

Our newspaper recently did a photo story on heart shapes in nature. God’s hidden messages–hidden except for those with the eyes to see.

Here was another heart shape, symbol of love. But not in the natural world. In the world humans made, in the road made up of asphalt and dirt and salt.

It’s not so difficult to believe God’s love shows up in the natural realm. But in the world so marred by both human and natural affliction–can we expect to find God’s stamp of love?

Yet, here it is. Here in the broken road is a symbol of love.

It made me think of a verse in Jeremiah 18. “This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ‘Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.’ So I went down to the potter’s hour, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him” (verses 1-4).

Here we are, going along the road of life, and cracks happen. Things get broken up. The clay was marred in his hands. And yet, sometimes there’s a message, in the very cracks themselves.

A message of love. A message of, “so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.”

Can you see messages of love, even in the “cracks” on your road?

I challenge you to look for them.

Because you know what? The crack you see in this picture is not the only one I see anymore.

Now that I’m looking for them, I see them everywhere! I even saw one in an ice patch the other day! I didn’t have my camera with me, and it’s gone now, but here are some others:

Notice that some of the shapes are not  quite heart shapes … but neither are our own attempts to love. Neither is our perception of God’s love in the cracks of our road. Those cracks can feel like nothing more than stumbling blocks. Potential disasters.

Yet, if we really look, if we can perceive with understanding, perhaps we can see the actual shape, even if it is a crack. Or,  as with one of them, an actual pothole.

Symbols of love. In the cracks. In the cracks of the road you walk every day.

Try looking … and tell me what you see! (Comment below, or send me your pics!)