From our brokenness...

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
~  Isaiah 54:10
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An escalator can never break, it simply becomes stairs.

I think we all realize that, but what if the thing that is broken is us?  How then do we describe ourselves?

Jesus gives us the complete example of what it means to be broken.  He was broken on the cross.  Before a large crowd, in front of his mother, and among those that he had walked with.  He was broken.

Each day there are those around us who are living their life, broken.  There are those with broken hearts, broken minds, broken bodies, broken spirits and broken relationships.

I struggle with the idea that Jesus invites us to live in our brokenness.  It is as if he invites us to accept our own brokenness, just as he did the brokenness of the cross.  

I have known people who live out their faith in amazing ways, by talking about their brokenness, and how that brokenness changed them.  Years ago while talking to a man who had survived a terrible drug addiction who was now helping others become sober, I asked him, "What would you change in your life if you could?"

His response?  "Absolutely nothing."

He realized that because of his own addiction and recovery, his own brokenness had made it possible for him to help others because he knew that brokenness "first hand."

Jesus does not ask us to reject our brokenness, but to accept it, and to ask God to help us make something of it.   It is through this acceptance that God finds a way to take us to a new place, where a new life is waiting, and where we can become stronger.  Not just stronger for ourselves, but for others.

That is the beauty to turning our mourning into dancing, and our sorrows into joy, while taking that which broke us, and living beyond.

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2018