Brokenness
There was a time when Step-son Hans and I were chasing a mouse that had gone behind the kitchen stove. Welding a broom we tried to dislodge the mouse from behind the stove so that we might capture and dispatch it. We did get the mouse but in the process we knocked a decorative plate from the wall. It fell to the floor and fragmented into many pieces. There was no way to save the plate. You could have glued the pieces together but many of them were so small that the plate would have had gaps where the decorations were missing. Helga was disappointed to discover the broken plate. Fortunately it was not a very expensive one.
There are times when life becomes broken. We do not think that it ought to happen, but it does. Henri Nouwen was a Priest and a psychologist. He spent 10 years of his life working with the disabled at a L’Arche community most of them at Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. It was out of this experience that he wrote, “Our life is full of brokenness – broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God’s faithful presence in our lives.” Our lives are full of brokenness. We cannot ignore the brokenness. It haunts our waking hours and our dreams. We cannot avoid the brokenness, we can only learn to live within it, using it to grow into a deeper relationship with the Healer of Broken Hearts, Jesus Christ. But there is more.
C. S. Lewis has written about the ways in which God in Christ works, “He works on us in all sorts of ways. But above all, he works on us through each other. Men are mirrors, or ‘carriers’ of Christ to other men. Usually it is those who know him that bring him to others. That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing him to one another, is so important. It is so easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects – education, building, missions, holding services…the Church exists for no other purpose but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other reason.”
Showing Christ to one another. Demonstrating the love and compassion of Christ to one another. Living out in faithfulness the teachings of Christ with one another. This is the way to a life full of vitality and excitement. Helping one another to be a child of Christ. This is the way to utter fulfilment and satisfaction.
I have come to believe that there is no better way to live. I find in Christ not only a way to live with the brokenness, but also a way to use it to develop the coping skills that are needed to live within the brokenness. This is the way of ultimate purpose and meaning. This is not only something to think about, it is something to do.