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The Louisiana hometown where I 
grew up is right off the coast 

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of the Gulf of Mexico. 
Hurricanes were a regular part 

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of my childhood where every 
August we would board up our 

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house and leave for a day or two
and wait for a storm to pass 

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through. 
Well, a few years ago a 

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hurricane named Laura came 
through and totally demolished 

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my hometown. 
The church where I grew up had 

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these beautiful stained glass 
windows that surrounded the 

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building. 
They were these scenes of Jesus 

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and his many miracles. 
Surprisingly, all of the stained

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glass windows survived Hurricane
Laura but one a piece depicting 

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Jesus ascending into heaven, 
coming back after the storm. 

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They found all of the glass 
pieces on the floor. 

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Our pastor gathered up all these
pieces of broken glass, put it 

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in a garbage bag and brought it 
to an artist in a nearby town 

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that worked with stained glass. 
The artist took the bag of 

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broken glass, but he couldn't 
figure out how to repair the 

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window. 
But fortunately, our pastor 

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found an old photo of the window
and sent it over to the artist. 

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It was exactly what he needed. 
A few months later, the project 

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was complete and the stained 
glass window was perfectly 

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restored. 
I really believe that this is 

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the story of our lives. 
Something horrific descends upon

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us, something out of our 
control, and we get shattered. 

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We think of our lives as this 
perfect picture that we have in 

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our mind, but we find that we're
just breaking glass on the 

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ground and we fear that there's 
no way to put the picture back 

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together again. 
But there is someone who can put

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things back together. 
There's someone who knows what 

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the picture is supposed to look 
like. 

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I am so thankful that Jesus is 
an artist who specializes in 

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shattered and broken people. 
He even said healthy people 

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don't need a doctor. 
Sick people do. 

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Sometimes to make something new,
the old thing has to be broken. 

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That's what Jesus does. 
He makes broken things 

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beautiful. 
This has been everyday miracles 

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by hope, mindfulness and prayer.