Choose Life: Readings For Radical DisciplesSampel

Whole or Broken?

I like being whole. Being broken doesn’t appeal to me at all. Yet when everything’s going along wonderfully in my life, I often end up ignoring God for long periods. Then it seems to take something broken for me to come back to him. It’s a pattern the Israelites modeled for us, and in particular David, who wrote the above verse. 

I was deeply struck several years ago when I read the following words by John Eldredge: “Until we are broken, our life will be self-centered, self-reliant; our strength will be our own. So long as you think you are really something in and of yourself, what will you need God for? I don’t trust a man who hasn’t suffered.”

Re-read that last quote.

That doesn’t mean we’re to go look for suffering, to want things to go wrong. Life sends enough brokenness our way without seeking it out. And the comforting thing is, as Vance Havner says, “God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.”

So brokenness is to be accepted – not fatalistically or with resignation – but with anticipation that the Lord will use it for his purposes. On the subject, Yancey muses, “It seems to me Christians are too busy trying to stuff up the cracks and correct those imperfections. It’s all right to try to fix our defects, but if it keeps us away from grace, it’s not good. Light only gets in through the cracks.” And shines out, we might add. 

True wholeness will come eventually and ultimately – but not yet. In the meantime, be encouraged, and allow God to shine his light through your cracks. 

Lord, I choose to be used in my brokenness today. Amen!