My mother remembers my grandmother lamenting that she
couldn’t keep anything from breaking “all her married life!” When you have
three boys, things break. When you are human, things break.
When we lived in
Birmingham, AL, a friend of mine accidentally broke one of my willow people.
I
was upset at first. Don reminded me that this is life, that friends are more
important.
One Christmas, I was at my sister-in-law’s house and while I
was washing the dishes, I broke her beautiful glass cake plate. When I offered
to replace it, she graciously refused, saying that these things happen.
In a way, I prefer an older car to a brand new one. There is
so much stress when you sit down behind the wheel of a brand spankin’ new
vehicle. But when you are driving a beater, you can relax. After all: what’s
the worst thing that can happen to that old thing?
In my house, many things are worn out, broken. They remind
me of the life that we live, the people I love. It’s like Matar and his “dents”
in Cars 2. He doesn’t want Holly Shiftwell to buff out his dents because they
remind him of his best friend, Lightning McQueen.
What about us?
I prefer not to be broken. I prefer to have things go very
well in my life. I prefer for my children not to be “broken”, hurt or despised.
I prefer to be perfect. But what does God want?
In Psalms 51:17, we read “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”Are we better broken?
I have a drawing in my house of a shepherd holding a lamb
over his shoulders.
“ …A sheep who keeps leaving the flock. The shepherd would
break the leg of the sheep so it couldn't run off, and carry it on his
shoulders while the sheep healed, caring for the sheep and building a bond with
the sheep, so the sheep would love the shepherd and not leave him.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AShepherd
Are we better broken?
Perhaps the next time I see something broken in my house, I
can use that as a reminder of two things:
1. My life is not boring.
2. God loves broken things. Broken things need to be
repaired, and guess who makes the best handy man?
Did you know that inside a sand dollar is the coolest skeletal
structure in the shape of a dove? It really does look like a tiny dove. But if
you don’t break the outside, you can’t see the beautiful inside.
Jesus says that unless a seed fall to the ground and dies,
it remains a single seed. But if it
dies, it produces many seeds.
So, if we are broken, does that mean that God can bring even
more good out of us than he could have if we weren’t? I don’t know. And I don’t
desire to break. But if I find myself in a broken place, these thoughts give me
hope.
