Bobby   was sitting in his KidZone class listening intently to what his leader, Mr. Brooks, was saying.

“You know kids, we sometimes wonder why bad things happen in our lives”, he was saying, “It’s a bit like this. Would you like to come up here Sam, and help me show everyone what I’m talking about?”

Sam went forward, and Mr. Brooks held up a china vase. “You see this vase”, he said, “This is like us. It’s a perfectly good vase, in fact it is Mum’s vase, and she puts her flowers in it. Now, I want you to hammer this Sam, and see what happens. I’ll put it inside this bag so bits won’t fly everywhere”, and he put it into a plastic bag.

Sam picked up the hammer, and hit the bag firmly. Everyone heard the clatter as the vase broke inside it.

Mr. Brooks took it out of the bag and held it up. It was a sorry sight, broken right in half.

“Now, do you think it can be fixed at all?” he asked. Bobby put his hand up.

“Yes, Bobby”, Mr. Brooks said.

“It could be glued back together with super glue”, Bobby said..

“That’s right, it could be”, Mr. Brooks said. “But there is an even better way to do it. People in Japan have discovered a way to mend broken china with gold. It’s called ‘kitsugi’, and instead of the mended vase being tried to make look like nothing has happened, the cracks are all filled with gold and it looks like this….” and he held up another vase the same with beautiful gold lines where the cracks had been.

“Oh”, said Hayley from the back of the class, “That is so pretty!”

“You know,” said Mr. Brooks, “That’s the same with us. When we’ve made mistakes and messed things up, we try to cover up our mistakes by mending them with superglue and pretending it never happened. It looks OK, but people will still remember the wrong things you have done, like a broken vase that has been fixed. But if we take our mistakes to God and confess them to Him as a sin, He will make us be even better than if we had just tried to cover it up ourselves. The Bible says He will not only forgive us our sin, but that He will make it as though it never happened at all, just as if He has mended us with gold seams. We can learn from our mistakes then and tell others to not do the same silly things”.

“I guess I’ll have to remember that”, Bobby said as he picked his things up and stood up, “I often do silly things and make mistakes. I don’t want to go around looking as though I’ve tried to fix them up myself!”