Broken Still Chosenনমুনা

You may be broken but you are not hopeless

Each of us goes through childhood with dreams. I’m not talking about the sleeping kind. I mean the kind of dreams you fantasize about as a kid. I always visualized myself as a sports hero, the high school jock running through a line of adoring cheerleaders on my way to the winning shot.

Which is a peculiar dream for me, since I was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at age five. As a kid, I tried to ignore the inevitable decline of my body. Until I couldn’t. When I could no longer run and chase a ball, I changed my dream to farming. Nope, you still need muscles for that, and mine were weakening with each day. My body was broken, my dreams felt useless, and I thought I was a hopeless waste of space on this planet.

Have you ever felt that way? Has life broken your dreams? Your hopes? Your relationships? Your faith? There’s no shame in saying yes. God knows our internal struggles. More than anyone, He understands the pain of betrayal and death. On those days when you may feel like hope is a million miles away, when your heart is so broken there are no more tears, remember what the apostle Paul tells us: Do not lose heart! Because God is at work within us even when we can’t see it on the outside.

If you are dealing with an incurable disease like I am, I want to tell you how sorry I am. I get you. I know that deep level of despair. At the same time, even though I don’t hold a candle to Paul, I like to think we would have been buddies, and I’ll repeat his words: Do not lose heart. You might be wasting away on the outside; whether it’s physical illness, financial distress, family trauma, or one of many different battles. But God promises to renew you on the inside daily.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:16–17 NIV).

Put your hope and trust in Him today. He wants to heal your wounds and your broken heart. And He has an eternal glory waiting for us that “outweighs them all.”

God heals my wounds when I am brokenhearted (Psalm 147:3).