Today, while touring a display of the works of blown glass artist Dale Chihuly, I was struck by a written summary of his work. Chihuly, a plaque on the wall asserted, is “well aware of the complexity and contradictions” that his glass medium holds. The work is both “fragile and resilient. It is ephemeral, and yet enduring.”
Sounds like a human being, doesn’t it?
We are as fragile and brittle as they come—from our emotions to our spirits to our very bodies themselves, a “treasure in clay jars,” as St. Paul would put it. And yet, the brilliance, creativity and resiliency found within the human being have no comparison on the planet. We are fleeting, our time on earth just a teardrop in the ocean of eternity, and yet what we invest in the story of humanity lives on in those who follow.
And when we leave space for light to shine through us, something beautiful is on display for others to behold.