Broken Promises

She used to be fun.  Every time I would see her, she would have recently had an adventure with her kids, or was eagerly planning the next one.  The local zoo, the children’s museum, the nearby farm, the water park.  Her scrapbooks were full of her kids’ sporting events, dance recitals, school plays, and birthday parties.  She was the mother everyone wishes they could be.

Not anymore.  The joy is gone.  Now she is in a dark, oppressive, terrifying place.  It’s as if she has been tossed into the bottom of a deep hole, with no way of ever emerging.  No hope of ever seeing daylight again.  Now it takes every ounce of effort just to get out of bed each morning.  She struggles through the days, counting the hours until her husband gets home from work and can take over the simple routines and responsibilities that, for her, have become insurmountable and nearly impossible.

She sits next to me in the kitchen, a mere shadow of the woman she used to be.  “I can’t,” she cries, the tears streaming down her pale face.  “I can’t accept that this is God’s plan for me.  Why is He allowing this to happen?  Why does He hate me?”

How can I reply?  What comfort do I have to offer my friend who has been crushed under this heavy weight?  Why, indeed has God allowed her to become so broken?

We often use that word, “broken.”   I’ve even used that word myself when referring to a child whose innocence has been destroyed by horrific circumstances.¹  But what, exactly, does it mean to be broken?

Sometimes we may have the misunderstanding that God is this big cosmic dictator that pursues people until he breaks their spirit and forces them into submission.  Like when a wild horse is tamed, we say that he has been broken.  If that’s what it means, then of course when we are broken, we would blame God and mistakenly believe that He hates us.

God does pursue us, it's true.  But not as a malevolent tyrant whose goal is to crush people.  Not at all!  Psalm 23:6 says, “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life (NLT)”.  He pursues us, not because He hates us, but because He has the gifts that He knows we need:  His goodness.  His unfailing love.  His grace.  As long as we are capable and self-sufficient, we have no need for Him and His grace.  We rely only on ourselves.  Our abilities and experience and human wisdom.  It's only when we find ourselves in situations where we simply do not have any resources, when there is absolutely nothing we can do, that we finally cry out to God, "I need you.  I trust you."  When our hands are empty, He fills them with His grace.

That's why David says to the Lord in Psalm 51:16-17, "You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering.  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."

We are intelligent, responsible, competent people.  We know how to "offer sacrifices."  It's relatively easy to DO things for the Lord.  Good, admirable things.  Our lives are full of opportunities to give and serve and minister to others.  But God does not delight in those things.  He wants us to come to Him with a broken spirit and a contrite heart.  A heart that is empty, just waiting to be filled with His grace.

So maybe instead of picturing ourselves as wild horses that need to be broken into submission, we can imagine that our hearts are made of soil.  They are full of promise, having all the potential to grow into amazing things.  But the seeds there have these hard shells around them.   We want those hard shells to be split open.  And yes, that's a terrifying thought!  It may require a dark, desolate, solitary place for that to happen.  But then, once the seed has broken open, it can receive nutrients.  It can grow.  It can transform from an ugly, dormant little seed into a gigantic oak tree or a beautiful flower.

That kind of surrender is very difficult, and it goes against everything in our nature.  Why would we want to be broken and dependent when we can be strong and autonomous?  But then we remember God's promise to be near to the brokenhearted, to save those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).  He draws near to us in the darkness.  There He waits, just ready and eager to pour out His grace and strength and love and goodness.

Being broken doesn’t mean that God hates us and wants to harm us.  On the contrary, it means that He still has a wonderful plan for us!  A plan for good things.  A plan to give us a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11).  It’s not that He has forgotten us.  No, being broken is a sure sign that He hasn’t forgotten us.  That He is actually at work, working to transform us.  That He is working to replace the hard, rocky, barren and stubborn soil with that which is rich, soft, fertile and flourishing.  He is shaking off the self-sufficiency that leads to stress and anxiety, causing us to find that sweet surrender and reliance that leads to perfect peace (Isaiah 26:3).

When the Lord sees our brokenness, He sees a new beginning.  A new seedling of hope ready to appear.  He sees endless possibility.  He sees amazing things that are just about to happen.  When the Lord sees our brokenness, He sees our hearts, our lives, just brimming with promise!

1.   http://psalm1139mama.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-broken-vessel.html