Dreaming About Broken Glass: The Bible Gives It No Meaning

Scripture records no dream of broken glass, and gives it no meaning. It cannot, really — glass barely exists in the Bible. The mirrors of that world were polished bronze, and the windows were holes in a wall.

But the two places glass does appear are worth the visit, dear friends, and one of them is about seeing badly.

Does the Bible interpret dreams about broken glass?

It does not. Scripture records many dreams and interprets only a handful, each meaning given directly by God through a named servant, for one person, about one matter. There is no verse fixing the sense of glass, or of breaking, or of anything else seen in the night.

The Bible keeps no dream dictionary, and we should be glad of it. A key would let us look God up instead of asking him.

Where does glass appear in the Bible?

Twice worth noting, and neither is a symbol of misfortune.

The first is the mirror, and here our translations have to work hard. Paul writes that now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Older Bibles gave us “through a glass, darkly,” which is beautiful and slightly misleading — he means a polished bronze mirror, which returned a dim, warped, brownish version of a face.

That is Paul’s picture of our present knowledge of God. Not false. Genuinely his face. Just dim, and bent, and not yet what it will be.

The second is in the Revelation, where John sees what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal before the throne. In a world without clear glass, that is an image of something almost impossible: water with no murk, depth with nothing hidden in it. The opposite of every sea anyone there had sailed.

The thing God does not do to broken things

Now, since the dream was about breaking, let us go to the verse that matters most.

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

A reed already crushed. A wick already going out, filling the room with smoke. Both are useless. Both are, by any reasonable assessment, finished — and the sensible thing is to snap the one and pinch the other.

Isaiah says this is precisely what God will not do.

Whatever else we take from a night of broken images, let us take that sentence. He is not standing over the damage deciding whether it is worth keeping. He has already decided.

Why the dream may have stayed with us

Let us be honest about what usually brings someone here.

Broken glass is the sound of something irreversible. That is why it unsettles us — not the shards, but the finality. We cannot unbreak a glass, and most of us are carrying something we cannot unbreak either: words said in a kitchen, a trust we handled carelessly, a decade we would take back.

The dream did not create that. It only handed us a picture for it while we were asleep.

And here the Gospel says something strange and specific. It does not promise that the glass goes back together. It promises that the broken thing is not discarded — and, in the case of the one who rose, that the wounds were still there afterwards and were the means by which he was recognised.

What to do with the morning

Let us not interpret the dream; there is nothing in it to interpret.

But if it set something ringing, let us name that thing to God without polishing it first. We are seeing dimly, as Paul said, and we are not required to understand our own lives before we are allowed to pray about them.

And let us be gentle today with whoever is nearest, since we have no idea which of them is a smoldering wick.

A blessing for the morning

May we be spared the fear that what is cracked in us will be thrown out.

May we see dimly and be at peace with dimly, until the face to face.

And may we handle one another as God handles reeds.

Related reading

• Dreaming About Frogs: No Fixed Biblical Meaning
• Dreaming of Dirty Water: The Bible Gives It No Meaning
• 12 Prayers For Repentance: Simple & Powerful