Faith and the Power of Repair

My daughter works in a preschool and recently told me the funniest story.  

While outside one morning with the children, they found a snail in the woods, and she suggested they bring it into the classroom to watch it. She put it on a tray, and they gathered around it. “Shhh,” she told them, “We have to be very quiet. Snails don’t like a lot of noise.” I’m pretty sure she made that part up, but the little ones were so quiet and still, watching the slimy little guy drag its big shell slowly across the tray. 

After some time, my daughter was called away to something else, and a few minutes later heard one of the boys say, “Don’t touch it.” When she returned to the table, the children had wandered off to do other things, except for one little boy. She noticed the tray with the snail had been turned over. She lifted the tray to find the snail had been smashed, its shell broken into lots of little pieces.

“Oh,” she said, “That’s too bad.” 

The one little boy who had remained at the table looked up at my daughter and said, “He needs some tape.”  

He needs some tape. 

Don’t we all?

While it’s unlikely tape would have helped the little snail, her story got me thinking about the ways our faith helps keep us, literally, together when we feel scattered and broken …  changes, times of grief, health challenges, separation from family, strained relationships, all can leave us feeling upended like that snail, with our outer shell scattered and broken.

But time and time again, I find that God is the tape that puts me back together when things like that happen. God is the tape that keeps me intact when I think I might unravel. God nourishes and heals, and puts me back on the path I’m meant to travel. With God as my tape, I remain hopeful, able to see the big picture, and conclude that somehow everything will end up ok.

It’s so easy for me to forget that God will always, always, show up with a roll of tape…  sometimes scotch tape, but other times duct tape when things have gotten really bad. 

It’s often hard for me to remember, like the little boy suggested, that sometimes all I need is a little tape, but then I remember, that God is always there to ask, “How big a piece do you need?”

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