Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put humpty dumpty back together again.
But God can.
Brokenness happens. Sometimes, it’s a fall. Sometimes it is life. Live long enough and you will taste brokenness. It will try to creep into your soul to taunt you with pain, and with blame to lead the way. Pain will challenge you to search for who the culprit might be so your grudge can find a landing pad.
The Fruit of the Root of Un-managed Brokenness
Once brokenness has landed it wants roots to be put down and then the branches of bitterness start growing. These branches are not just to entange you but all those you are in a relationship with. Roots of bitterness not only divide you against yourself they choke the life out of you.
When Jesus called forth Lazarus out of the grave, He said to those standing around observing, “Remove the grave clothes from him.”
Jesus wants to involve others in your healing process. You may not want him too, You might be wrestling over the fact that people were the very thing that took you down. Precisely why God wants to use them to restore you.
You might have survived situations because only God could have brought life back to you.
He will use people to remove grave clothes one article at a time. One accusation at a time. One bad decision at a time.
One lie at a time. One painful event after another will start to be removed as each article of grave clothing is removed from you.
A Contrite Heart
A broken and contrite heart is what God searches for, it’s what He can identify with. The one wounded for our transgressions, the one who felt every temptation we have faced. He tasted it for us, yet He remained pure and sinless.
Have you ever made empty promises? Broken vows you swore you wouldn’t break? I have and the ache of that pain, the disappointment within myself broke me. My heart was shattered and broken. It was love I intended to exchange only to find it was upheld on one lonely end.
My heart ached for God. I know that seems strange but it did. The lonely heart of God rushing to a broken people who couldn’t keep a pinky-promise let alone the long list of I will’s from us that He knew we wouldn’t keep.
The ache in our gut, the discovery of how we’ve all turned aside to little gods promising us so much. In reality they only delivered gravel when we hoped they would deliver grandeur.
The songs of love, worship and adoration from our lips but our hearts are preoccupied with everything but Him.
The impatience of our souls longing and lusting with restless wanderings as we search for somewhere to land.
The corpses of a past life we drag around, refusing to cut an umbilical cord that we unknowingly sustain. We feed it without realizing we do.
Finding What Is Real
We sit, not to be still but to sort through and find what is real. We use technology in place of community and the ache of loneliness yearns to be filled. We pick up a device and scroll until our fingers are tired or our battery has died.
Our hearts break way before our phones do. Brokenness cries out and God draws near. He’s not mad, only sad when He sees all the things we run to hoping to satisfy a thirsty parched soul.
The hungry soul is famished reeling from activity to activity. Although we are still unsatisfied, in a strange way we are so proud of the pursuit of fruitless busyness.
We finally wind down to nothing, elbows propped up on our knees, face in our hands we stare at the ground. Ants march along with more direction and purpose than we can seem to find.
I sit with the awareness of not only my life but all of us have drifted. How have we drifted so far? How desperate we are in need of mercy. How broken we are.
Sitting there, barely lifting my eyes, my heart boldly approaches the throne of grace. Mercy is found there. People will approach a grace throne boldly if they are assured they will meet God there.
I will . You will too. We throw ourselves upon the mercy seat of God. We drink from this cup we don’t deserve and mercy is poured into the places of our lives others have whispered about.
When Grave Clothes Are Removed
As the grave clothes are removed, broken pieces are made whole… the grave clothes aren’t needed to hold you together anymore because you are whole.
He might just put you back together in front of the very ones that hurt you. His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
From the moment of brokenness you experienced God assembling what was needed to bring you back to an upright position.
A righteous man may fall seven times and rise again
Proverbs 24:16
God is always in the recovery process on our behalf. His process is always to restore us back to our original condition. Nothing broken and nothing missing.
Question
Are you in a recovery process? If so, what do you feel God is doing in your life?