The End Of Me By Kyle IdlemanSample

Broken to Be Whole

Sociologist Brene Brown’s TED talk on vulnerability has accumulated more than fifteen million hits. A significant factor in its popularity is the plain truth that, as much as we fight it, we long for the freedom to admit we’re broken. We don’t realize our need to do it. It’s true for every one of us, and it’s most true for those who least realize it.

Brown helps us see we’re not alone. Here’s what she says: “We are ‘those people.’ The truth is… we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health diagnosis, one serious illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being “those people”—the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our children play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door.”

There are too many voices telling us to keep up appearances, because if we don’t, our life will fall apart.

There are too many voices telling us to entertain ourselves, and if we don’t think the bad thoughts, the bad stuff will somehow trickle away.

That’s why the people of our times have become masters of illusion, experts at covering pain, abusers of medication, slaves of financial debt, followers of fads, and partakers of loneliness. Because we won’t realize that the only solution for being broken is… brokenness.

The good news is that God makes the broken whole. He takes the overlooked, the undervalued, the left out, the written off, the damaged and destroyed, and then he does what only he can do.

God loves to make the broken beautiful.

Jeremiah 18:4-6 is such a beautiful image of God sitting at the wheel, looking down at the flawed piece of pottery, and refusing to toss it. The potter made another jar “as seemed best to him.” All the same clay and the same cracks, but all made new. There is no junk heap. The art is in endless possibilities of one piece of clay.

My prayer is, “God, take my broken pieces and remold them into what seems best to you.”