Brokenness

Last week I opened a cupboard door and a good pie plate fell out and smashed all over the tile floor. Of course it wasn’t one of the everyday pyrex ones but a specially deep and nicely fluted one. However, I’ve never been one to cry over broken crockery. As long as nobody is hurt, it’s just an object and can be replaced if necessary. 

Standing beside the car yesterday I noticed a nasty scrape above the well for the tire. It’s in the same place we just had fixed and repainted for a similar scrape, gotten from parking too close to a wall. I’m not naming names, but I didn’t do it. However, I’ve never been one to cry over a scratched car, either. I like a car to look nice, but at the end of the day it is just a vehicle to transport us from one place to another. As long as nobody is hurt, it’s just a car.

I’ve been praying for a lot of brokenness in peoples’ lives lately. Broken marriages. Broken relationships between parents and children. Broken friendships. Broken hearts. 

Broken lives. These I cry over. These I pray for.

 

It seems everywhere I look I see scrapes and scratches and even apparently total smashes in people’s lives. There are people with heavy hearts and long faces, spirits sagging into despair as they lose hope that it will ever get any better.

Jesus went into the Temple once and picked up the scroll of Isaiah and read from what we call chapter 61, identifying himself as the person described. ‘...the Lord has anointed me to ...bind up the broken-hearted...to comfort all who mourn...to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.’

That was Jesus’ mission statement. That was his purpose in coming to earth as a man. And he did it, and he still does it, every day. Sometimes miraculously in one fell swoop. Sometimes incrementally, almost unnoticeably. 

If you are reading this from a position of brokenness – if your heart is despairing and expectation of restoration lies dormant or even dead - then I pray, as Paul did for the Romans, ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.’

God is faithful, and he will do it.

Heavy clouds

Heavy clouds have sunk onto the hills round about us, resting their heavy flanks on the brows of the hills and roiling their dampness into every dip and glen. There is no horizon outside today, just an expanse of grey stretching as far as I can see.

I have to confess that having heard today’s news on the radio a few times, I feel as if heavy clouds have sunk onto my brain, soaking every synapse in the damp pervasiveness of evil in our time. The body of a three year old child who has been missing for a few days has been found, and his mother is being questioned. Reports from Afghanistan indicate that violence against women there is on the rise as western forces withdraw and gender repression is powerful and resurgent. The world’s newest nation, South Sudan, is on the verge of collapse and genocide is a real possibility. I read details of a 46 year old marriage which ended in divorce last year as the husband started a relationship with the wife’s friend. And so on.

Meeting the heavy clouds is the damp stench of the swamp we seem to be mired in.

I’m listening to an inspiring Hillsong composition called God is Able, as I write this. He will never fail. He is Almighty God. I am reminding myself of that. 

The heavy clouds of evil and oppression may blank out any vision of the sun. If I were trying to explain what the sun is today to an alien who just emerged from underground, he would find it incomprehensible. 

But that doesn’t make it any the less real. I know that the sun is there, on the other side of these damp grey clouds, and that it will shine again. 

I know that God is always good, that the Son is there, on my side and yours, and that he has overcome evil at the cross. ‘My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.’ One day he will sweep in and mop up the final flings of the enemy and then...peace will reign forever. God is for us; he has open arms; he will never fail us. Christ alone. My cornerstone.

Remember that today when you hear the news, when you see the injustice and oppression, when your heart aches with anguish for those who suffer. God’s heart aches too, and not only has he given his answer to it all in Jesus, he also is expecting us to do what we can, in our own wee corner, to make a difference today.

Even though it seems like explaining what the sun is to an underground alien who can’t see it, offer someone who is at the point of despair today the certain hope that Jesus is for us, and he has overcome evil.

And raise your voice in protest; your heart in prayer; your eyes to the heavens, expectantly.