By Caron Loveless
“Over and over, we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open. When you feel yourself breaking down may you break open instead.”
Elizabeth Lesser
Somewhere along the way we latched on to the idea that “broken is bad.” It probably started in childhood when we got the stink-eye for breaking Aunt Wilma’s Waterford crystal or when the neighbor came bounding over suspicious that we knew something about his shattered window. Or, maybe, it got reinforced when a parent yelled, “ Do you have any idea how much that toy cost?”
However it happened,
we learned our lesson;
broken things bother and embarrass us.
Bad.
We wear hats on bad hair days, hide broken fingernails, dump dull marriages, and avoid hospitals like the plague. When our car breaks down it’s a “clunker,” and if the vacuum quits we’d rather buy a new one than spend $29.95 to get it fixed.
We have little tolerance for brokenness, especially in our own lives. It’s doesn’t speak well of us. We’d rather lie, cover up, and gloss over what’s really going on rather than have folks think things aren’t pretty. And somewhere (we should really track this down) we got the idea that failed or messed up people can’t claim they love Jesus. Or, worse, they don’t deserve to.
Whaaattt?
Did anyone ask Jesus?
Ok, it sort of makes sense to our puny human minds that the Sinless Son of God would steer way clear of anything less than perfect. But, last time I checked, Jesus was totally attracted to bad, messed up, shameful people.
That is not a misprint.
Quick review: The most sickly, unseemly people got Jesus’ attention. Blind eyes, deaf ears, and outcasts – did not repel him, they compelled him. He preferred to dine with the destitute, call on the crippled and welcome the wayward. The baddest man in the region? Jesus is headed to his house. A compromised woman with perfume? He says, you watch, this girl will be famous.
Friends, Jesus doesn’t badmouth our brokenness.
Even if we should have known better.
Then, why is it, when the sorry shambles of our life breaks public, we think we’re done? Or, if someone we know turns up tainted, we run?
Where, I ask again, did we learn this?
Jesus is a lover and gatherer of the broken, splintered pieces of what was our life (get this: even if it used to be known far and wide as an exemplary, lovely Christ-honoring life) and like a master artisan; he finds a way to refit and restore what is left into something surprising, breathtaking, new. He says he gives beauty for ashes and gladness for tears. And from all those nasty shards he makes something so purely whole that it shows off his glory like streaming sunlight through an old church window. Come on.
Don’t be ashamed of your brokenness.
As crazy as it sounds,
and as impossible as it looks,
what you’ve got there is fresh material for a masterpiece.
“ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he did anoint me; to proclaim good news to the poor, sent me to heal the broken of heart, to proclaim to captives deliverance, And to blind, receiving of sight, to send away the bruised with deliverance, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Jesus. Luke 4:18-19 (YLT)
“Over and over, we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open—not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live.
When you feel yourself breaking down may you break open instead.”
Elizabeth Lesser
We are here to continue the grace-laced, restoring legacy of Jesus. And if you feel the need for some of that we know where to get some—-contact us at www.kairoscollective.com
(Painting by mjmccarthy)
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Great article Caron. One of my favorite verses is Psalms 51:17, ” The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” I often tell people my life was like shattered glass. No one could put me back together. Shards would have been missing and I would have been incomplete BUT God put me back together in greater form than I was before. Thanks for writing a very real and helpful piece,
Thanks so much, Amy, for sharing your experience & reminding us all again how remarkably transforming our lives can be in our Lord’s hands.
Keep passing the Word-
Caron