Are you entering the new year with a little less gusto than you’d hoped? Maybe kids are sick or work is frustrating. Perhaps your Christmas tree is still waiting to be returned to the attic or taken to the curb, but the time to deal with it never seems to come. If you’re tired or not ready to take the year by storm, that’s okay.

Sometimes, “it’s okay to just behold.”

So says artist Makoto Fujimura on the first episode of The Slow Work with Sandra McCracken, a new CT podcast that connects the creative process and spirituality. Mako and his wife, Haejin Shim Fujimura, joined McCracken to talk about marriage, creative justice, and a form of Japanese art in which broken pottery is mended with kintsugi, which means “golden seams.”

Through the lens of kintsugi, the Fujimuras remind us that when Jesus returns, he will not only be a glorified human being but a “glorified, wounded human being.” He will still have the scars from the cross. Jesus, the perfect sacrifice for our sins, is forever able to relate to our exhaustion and our brokenness.

So if you’re feeling worn down, may this podcast episode be a place you find rest. Maybe take a moment for a Google search to behold a few images of kintsugi. May we find, cultivate, and build beauty in our lives not by despising all the broken things, but by beholding and mending.