One of my favorite picture books is about a little fox named Pandora. The illustrations are beautiful – both whimsical with a little bit of melancholy, just like the story itself. The book opens with, “Pandora lived alone, in a land of broken things,” and the first time I read that sentence, and every time afterward since then, I’ve felt the words as if they’ve reverberated somewhere deep in my soul.

The book goes on to tell the story of how Pandora goes from one broken thing to the next, gathering them to mend and repair, reconstruct and tend to, until she meets a little bird who, like the inanimate things she’s found, is also broken. He cannot fly as he was made to. I don’t know how many times I’ve read this book, but as the first month of this new year comes to an end, Pandora feels like just the reminder I need.

I no longer set New Year’s resolutions or goals, and for the last few years, I haven’t been able to settle on a word. Those practices have been helpful to me in the past. I love how some of these “new year” practices encourage reflection and self-awareness, and I know they can be helpful tools. I may go back to using some of them in the future. However, in recent years, I’ve needed to release them and reframe how I acknowledge passing through the threshold between one year and another.

I like to reflect on my becoming, and the becoming of the world around me. Like Pandora, I want to acknowledge that I live in a world of broken things with a heart that often feels lonely in its longing and aches. But instead of drowning in the seemingly doomed reality of that, I want to find the things within and around me that I can gather, tend to, repair, and be with, even while my heart aches.

Pandora, who doesn’t know how to fix the little blue bird in the way she’s fixed other things, chooses to tend to the bird with her presence. She watches him mend towards more and more life until he’s finally flying again. It’s a beautiful story. And after all that withness and work, it seems the goal only leads to losing this new friend. Pandora, left alone again, seems to wonder what the point is.

Have you ever been there? Did the fruit of your work or effort or faith turn out to look nothing like you thought it would? Did you pour yourself, your heart, and your hands into something or someone, only to lose what you thought you’d be able to keep?

The first month of this new year is almost over, winter might be dragging on whether it’s the actual weather or the wintering of your soul. Maybe you are crushing your goals and full of hope – if that’s true, that’s wonderful and I wish for more of that for you. But if you find yourself in another place – a place of doubt or questions, of deconstruction or loneliness, I want you to know that you aren’t alone and that hope is not gone. In fact, hope is for the ones who often find themselves a little lost and in the dark. No matter how broken or overwhelming, how cold or confusing it feels right now: you are still becoming and hope will not stop coming for you.

If it’s helpful, here are a few prompts to help you peer into your own brokenness and becoming, and the brokenness and becoming of the world around you. Take a minute to write your responses in a journal, or invite God into your time of reflection.

• What things in my heart, mind, and body need tender care and attention right now?
• What in my life needs mending and repair?
• What one thing can I help tend to or mend in my home or family or community?
• Who needs my simple presence right now?
• Where can I plant a seed or prune a branch for the sake of my own and the world’s becoming?

I won’t spoil the ending of Pandora’s story here, because I truly hope you will go and experience it for yourself as it’s told and illustrated on the page. But I will say the message of the book might just be the reminder we all need: every act of mending and repair reaps and ripples so much further and deeper than we can ever dare to hope for or imagine. Every act of tender care, each moment of attention given to ourselves or another, every mend and stitch, matters and is done as unto God. These acts are tending to our further collective becoming and the coming of the kingdom of God right here and now.

And maybe that’s all we need more of this year.

In 2025, I want to keep becoming one who tends to, stays with, and mends. I want to live in this lonely world of broken things and believe that even here, Jesus came and is still with us, growing us into more life upon life, so that we may together live it to the full, despite everything.

 

Listen to Tasha’s devotion below or on your favorite podcast app.

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