Broken || The Intro

I have a distinct childhood memory of my dad carrying me out of the doctors office.  I was crying and he was telling me it was okay.  I didn’t want it to be true.  I was only five, so I really didn’t understand.

Her name was Connie.  She was a little impatient one day after school.  I was at the top of the slide, trying to get my feet out from under me...when the next thing I knew I was flying off the side of the slide. She pushed me.

After much complaining, the next time my family saw me, I was in this little yellow cast - my wrist was broken.

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Broken.

It doesn’t sound good - brokenness that is.  Brokenness is defined as: reduced to fragments; ruptured; torn; fractured; not functioning properly; out of working order (source).

Brokenness is something that we yearn to fix.  We know, God heals brokenness too:

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

--Psalm 147:3

But what if brokenness wasn’t always bad?  What if brokenness was the path that leads to Wholeness?  What if…

I’m not the first kid to cry over a broken bone. I’m, also, not the first person to think that maybe, just maybe brokenness wasn’t all bad. The great and wonderful thinker and author, Ann Voskamp wrote an entire book about it - The Broken Way.

She writes:

The seed breaks to give us the wheat.  The soil breaks to give us the crop, the sky breaks to give us the rain, the wheat breaks to give us the bread. And the bread breaks to give us the feast. There was once even an alabaster jar that broke to give Him all the glory...Never be afraid of being a broken thing.

Can’t you see it?  The seed breaks its outer shell.  The broken shell isn’t bad.  It isn’t the end.  The broken shell gives way for the sprout.  The spout breaks the ground, but the broken ground isn’t bad.  It isn’t the end.  The broken ground gives way for the plant to grow. The broken wheat isn’t bad.  It isn’t the end.  The broken wheat makes flour.  The flour is baked in the fire - to give us bread.

And then there is the bread.  The broken bread isn’t bad.  It isn’t the end.  It’s the beginning of the feast.  The first taste to hit the tongue..

The bread breaks, the knife cuts.  The crumbs hit the table and scatter across the plate - all of the broken pieces.  But this continual brokenness gives nutrients - leads to life.

So what if?  What if  brokenness was the path that leads to Wholeness?  

What if in our continual brokenness leads to life?  What if all the pain and all the scattered pieces were the only way?  What if...