The Broken Way

This morning as I  sat and  drank my coffee, I looked at this  book that  I had bought over  a year ago that I had put on  my  shelf.   I ran into it as I  was decoratinng for  Christmas yesterday.  I laid in on my morning chair.  So this morning I thought I would pick it up and read it. It made me think of my reading partner Linda. We would always read books together and share what we thought. Grief came.

The book is The Broken Way by  Ann Voskamp.  Remember her?  She also wrote One Thousand Gifts.   These are my highlights from chapter one.

Not one thing in your life is more important than figuring out how to live in the face of unspoken pain.  When I think of pain, I think of my many losses of that last several years. What do you do when it feels like everything’s changed? How do you put all the pieces back together?

Old scars can break open like fresh wounds and your unspoken broken can start to rip you wide open and maybe the essence of all the questions is: how in the holy name of God do you live with your one broken heart?

There’s absolutely no today pattern as to who gets pain and who gets peace.  This is the deal we all get: guaranteed suffering.   We all get it.   How do we live with our broken heart?

Jesus died crying.  Jesus died of a broken heart. He said earlier: Blessed are those who are sad, who mourn, who feel the loss of what they love-because they will be held by the One who loves them. When the church isn’t for the suffering and broken, then the church isn’t for Christ.  The body of Christ offers something to cling to – right here in our own scarred hands.

This happened so the power of God can be seen in him.  Brokenness happens in a soul so the power of God can happen in a soul.  “Let Him do with me whatever He wants as He wants for as long as He wants if my darkness is light to some soul.”  Mother Teresa.   There is a doctor in the house who ‘binds up the broken hearted’ and Wounded Healer who uses nails to buy freedom and crosses to resurrect hope and He never treats those who hurt on the inside as less than those who hurt on the outside.

There is so much more in this first chapter but I will end with this. “The seed breaks to give us the wheat. The soil breaks to five 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 an alabaster jar that broke to give Him all the glory.”   Are you broken?   Read with me.