Good morning…
My mind wakes from sleep filled with a short sentence. “This is an incredibly broken place.”
What an odd first thought for me, an eternal optimist. When I experience odd, unexpected, surprising, I figure the Spirit of God is somehow rising up to shed light on something new. What might this strange revelation mean? “This is an incredibly broken place.”
First off, I look around me to see all kinds of brokenness in our shared space. Broken trust. Broken leaders. Broken promises. Broken bodies. Broken relationships. Broken marriages. Broken homes. Broken hearts. Broken hopes. Broken dreams.
I am reminded of a plaque I saw at Goodwill this week.
An hour later I stopped by my favorite small local shop and saw this sign.
The challenge is this: to be the Mr. Rogers of our neighborhood, to be a helping healer empowered by God’s Spirit, we need to deal with our own inner brokenness.
I did a rude, selfish this week. Really rude. Really selfish. The next morning I woke up mortified. How could I make such a self-centered choice?
Because I am broken. I am flawed. Too often I elbow out of my way both God and other people. Rudely and selfishly, I hoard for myself.
Woken up by my heart’s anxious unsettledness, I knew I needed to apologize and to make amends with my impacted friend. I prayerfully pondered, “God, what do I do now? I am so appalled, so embarrassed, so disappointed in myself. What do I say to set things straight?”
God and I came up with a plan. Together we carried it out. I went to visit my friend, I asked to talk with her privately, and I tearfully told her all about the ugly thing I had done. She was unaware of my rude, selfish mistake, but I knew the truth. The truth was tenderizing me. I knew I could not be the Mr. Rogers in our neighborhood until I was honest with God, with my self, and with my friend. I needed to admit candidly my inner brokenness. I needed to submit my whole flawed self to God again.
After I explained the entire situation, my friend smiled a sweet smile and hugged me truly, deeply, tenderly. For me she embodied God’s tangible grace and unending forgiveness. “Thank you for your gracious response to my rude, selfish choice,” I texted her later. “This situation will always remind me that when I focus off of God and onto my own impulsive desires, I can get easily sucked into the darkness of me, mine, and more. Thank you for the gift of forgiveness and for your gentle grace.”
“Don’t think twice about it!!!” she texted back. “You are always witnessing to so many all the time by your actions.”
“Some of my actions are better than others,” I replied. “We all have two sides to our unique coins and sometimes my selfishness detracts from the best of me. The light of God’s grace feels so good, shining warmly on me through you.”
Again and again, God’s healing power is designed to beam through our places of brokenness. What remains after we take responsibility for each poor decision is more honesty, more dependency upon God, and a growing awareness that when we are sucked into our own greedy desires, we cannot be the healing helpers our broken neighborhood needs us to be.
I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too are to love one another (John 13:34, AMP). “The key to understanding this and other statements about love is to know that this love (the Greek word agape),” says the footnote in our Bible, “is not so much a matter of emotion as it is of doing things for the benefit of another person, that is, having an unselfish concern for another and a willingness to seek the best for another.” To seek the best for another, we need to be candid about the fact that we are all capable of rude, selfish choices. To be helpers attending to the brokenness in our neighborhood, we first need to attend to the brokenness in our own heart.
My rude, selfish choice interrupted the rhythm of God’s agape love, and our willingness to apologize, to make amends, to ask for forgiveness allowed God’s healing light to filter through my undeniable brokenness. I guess this morning God wants me to remember: “This place is incredibly broken.”
This place is me. This place is you. This place is the heart of every human being. When we admit our selfishness, we are invited to submit to our Re-creator again. What remains is more honesty, more dependency upon God, and a growing awareness that when we are sucked into our own greedy desires, we cannot be the healing helpers our broken neighborhood needs us to be.
And now there remain: faith [abiding trust in God and His promises], hope [confident expectation of eternal salvation], love [unselfish love for others growing out of God’s love for me], these three [the choicest graces]; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13, AMP). Thank you to Gina Palermo for these gorgeous photos which help us to see our truth illuminated: God’s light shines through our darkness and our dark brokenness cannot extinguish God’s choicest graces.
Yes, this is an incredibly broken place and still faith, hope, and love remain. The greatest of these choice graces is God’s abundant agape love.
…Sue…
