The Breaking
It’s hard
To give You glory for my broken heart
To be thankful for what I’ve lost
The tears I’m crying I lift up to You, God
I give You praise in the good
So why not praise You for the bad too?
I’ve seen You put broken things back together again
So, here’s my heart, Lord
What’s left of it
While driving to church today, I told God, “I’m broken…and You’re the one who broke me.”
I didn’t know how to feel about the statement, and I was honestly shocked that it had come out of my mouth. I took a moment and thought back on the countless other times in my life I had been broken. I, however, always had someone to blame in those circumstances, even if that person was myself. But this time, it had been God I put my trust in, not man, and still…broken.
I began speaking out my frustrations, “How many times do I have to go through this? How many times do I have to watch my dreams die? How many times do I have to watch people I love walk away from me? Will this pain ever end? Will I ever heal? Why do I try so hard when it’s always something out of my control that shipwrecks it all?”
I wasn’t angry at God; it was just a realization of a characteristic I didn’t know how to adapt to. God breaks people. God breaks people like me.
Job 5:18 “For he wounds, but he also binds up;
he injures, but his hands also heal.”
I turned the radio up in my car to numb the pain of the realization, but what came to mind instead was an open field. I thought of a farmer tending that field. He took a plow and began breaking and tearing up the ground. After a day’s work, the field was unrecognizable. The once smooth field was ripped up in rows. Its beautiful green grass was churned up and buried in overturned soil. The once unmarked field was now damaged earth. It was ugly.
I thought, The field is me, isn’t it?
Next, I saw the farmer come out to the field and push seeds into the torn-up soil; the field didn’t look any different. When the farmer finished, I thought of rainclouds coming and raining all over the broken field. It looked worse—muddy and ruined. No one could come through that field without getting mud all over them.
But then I thought of the sun coming back out. I watched the field with the farmer, and sure enough, something started to grow. Something new. Tall rich fruit trees grew from the once broken field. There was so much fruit on the trees that people came from all around to eat the fruit, and their hunger was satisfied.
Isaiah 43: 18-19 “Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.”
I turned my radio off, and I understood something I hadn’t before about God. He doesn’t break without intention. Just like a farmer plows a field to bring more from it, God plows our hearts to bring more from us.
I thought back to all the times I had been broken in my past and not one of them was used in vain. Even though it is so hard to see now when I’m broken, God has and will bring amazing fruit from my broken heart to provide for other searching souls.
Psalm 51: 16-17 “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.”
If you are broken today like I am, there is hope. We all go through darkness, but I believe that it is to bring us to the light. If your field has been torn up, receive the seed that is Jesus (Gal. 3:16), and allow God to do a new and beautiful thing in you.
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