Broken

This broken world can get you down.

Nehemiah 1:3-4  They said to me, "Things are not going well for those who returned to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire."

4  When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven.

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Most of us do not like broken. It may be a broken heart, a family that is torn apart or a broken body. It may be something inanimate that we cannot use anymore like a coffee cup or a cell phone; oh how we dread the broken cell phone.

The world that we live in is full of broken stuff. We see pictures from the news showing us how broken our world is. We see damage from a storm, governments that are crooked and people whose life has been changed from a senseless crime.

When we see something broken we are usually inclined to fix it or find someone that can. Nehemiah was a man that didn't like broken stuff. For him it was the news from home that Jerusalem was in ruins and that the city was unprotected from future attacks. Nehemiah was very emotional about the devastation of his homeland.

Sorrow and grief are natural and healthy emotions which are a natural reaction in the face of this world’s broken state. For the Christian sorrow is not forever and we know that the worst pain that we deal with is usually not going to last a long time. But there are a lot of people that do suffer without an end in sight and they have to wonder why their life is such a struggle.

My wife's favorite book in the Bible is Job because she wrestles with the same questions that he had. There doesn't seem to be any good reason for the struggle and that makes us shout out to God and question what he is doing.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4  All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.  He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

What is your reaction when others suffer? It is easy to become overloaded with the brokenness in this world. We can become calloused and uncaring but for the child of God that is not an appropriate response. How can we love God and our neighbor and then look away when we have the ability to help them?

God's children are uniquely equipped to have an impact on those that suffer. God’s love and the Holy Spirit’s power are both needed to help those that are broken around us. Suffering gives us opportunities to share God's love and comfort so that the people that we help can see that God has met their deepest need through his son Jesus.

There is a part of us that does not like for things to not be useful any more or not work like they should. I think that it must be a part of being created in God's image. God doesn't like things to be broken either and he has gone to great lengths to make broken things be restored to perfection.

Isaiah 53:5  But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.

God loves us so much that he became broken in order to heal our brokenness. His perfect creation was marred by sin and the full range of consequences that sin produces. It may seem strange to us that God didn't make things perfect again right away, God's people have been waiting a long time for the New Heaven and New Earth to be revealed, we know he will follow through with his promise on his timetable.