“God of the broken.”

M,

There is nothing to be ashamed of when we face the God of the broken. There is no sin to hide and no flaw to put under wraps. If we grant His omniscience then we know it is all known anyway. If we understand grace, then we know there is help given for even the direst expressions of our soullessness.

The problem we have is that we do not want to be broken. We have lived so much under the idea of covering up cracks and putting our best foot forward. We exist in the realm where it is weakness to admit weakness. It is folly to appear vulnerable. There is a good reason for this. Extreme honesty is often derided. You will often get advice from people if you even give a hint that you do not know what you are doing. Some of it is well meaning but done with an almost violent hatred of weakness that can seem personal and unpleasant. Some of it is callous. Both are just expressions of a deep fear we all have of being broken up by life. It might take us a lifetime of dramatic events to even let that thought sink in.

Here is the deal, though. We do not come to this hill so we can live out the normal script of the unfounded life. Any direction away from the lie we tell about ourselves is a step into the light. We know from constant hammering on that there are no passive believers and there is no indifferent road in God. The idea of confessing, of looking at our evil first before we take on the world and of putting ourselves in the context of a saviour are the building blocks of the new life we are being made into.

There is no true healing for the undeclared sick. This is not the self-help game. There is no map for those who choose to help heaven help them. This is the life of choice, though. We must admit it. We must say that there is something wrong with the world we live in. We must believe that the great correction of eternity to the nature of all reality must start in us.