Broken.... that's what I see in these chapters.... "And I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentations..." (Amos 8:10)
God's people are broken, the wicked are broken... but it is in God's mercy that we are broken now so that we don't have to be broken at the end of time...
This post is late... almost a day late... because I too am broken. It's interesting that this weekend I preached a message on "Brokenness: Our Greatest Need." Because unless we are broken and recognize our desperate NEED of Christ, He cannot save us! However, these last several days I've been going through different phases of my own "broken."
For starters, I re-injured my back, and have been in severe pain since Monday morning, so much so that I could hardly walk and had to leave work (I shouldn't have gone in to work to start with, but I tried!) So once I got home, I spent the rest of Monday as well as much of Tuesday on an ICE pack in bed. I felt broken physically and incapacitated. I'm not sure if the back spasms and pain had anything to do with the big load of firewood I brought home this weekend. I wanted to do something special as a surprise for the family that I live with... and someone was giving away free firewood, so I went and loaded up the back of my van with firewood, and then came and unloaded it all--all alone! I didn't feel pain at the time... I thought I was strong enough. But I guess now I'm paying the price for that firewood.
Then as I was laying in bed Monday (yesterday) morning feeling like I have a knife in my back, my best friend calls me broken and weeping... her mother has just died. We all knew it was coming, but still... it's never easy when it happens. Our mothers were both diagnosed with cancer at the same time. We wept together and prayed together... While we have hope, it's still hard to say goodbye.
But that hasn't been the only death this week. On top of that, another friend died Sunday evening... from breast cancer. She put up a valiant fight, for almost three years. But cancer won! And I just found out this evening, Tuesday evening, that another long-term family friend died. That's three friends in three days that have gone to their rest. We are broken living in a broken world... we suffer the ravages of a world that is broken... and we are broken as a result.
Needless to say, I feel broken... on multiple levels right now. Like the merriment of the holidays has been turned into mourning... and pain. But I praise the Lord for the promise that He will one day wipe away all tears from our eyes and all pain and suffering and death will be no more... Pain is a good thing. It reminds us that we are alive and we still feel... It protects us, it drives us to the cross. So this has been a difficult couple days, but it's okay to be broken. God mends broken bodies and broken hearts... and He will mend ours. And I'm okay... because I have Him! But if I'm running behind on my postings for a few days, you all will know why...
Tomorrow's Reading: Amos 9 and Revelation 9
No comments:
Post a Comment