Brokenness: An Open Door

Our solid oak chair is broken on one side, split top to bottom, and has protectively been set aside in order to avoid further damage. This old antique, precious because it belonged to my husband’s grandmother, has lost its function – for now. Repairing such a splintered (or otherwise compromised) piece of furniture is critical if it is to have purpose. 

With the old chair as illustration, this evening I’m pondering humanity’s inclination to fix things.  We like being fixer-uppers, since broken things have little function and hold less value than undamaged ones.  Fixing sometimes seems our calling, doesn't it?  Except when the core of a human person is involved.  In fact, in that case our attempts to patch and repair often fall woefully short. 

In the past year, I’ve thought (in quiet moments, sometimes by candlelight) about the human inclination to fix, and have come to believe that soulful fissures and even deep fractures can have important, if not also essential, purposes.  Brokenness of the human spirit has the great potential to open it for cleansing, for the “light bulb” of insight to shine with penetrating realities.  A broken person is unshackled by imposed ideals (self-determined visions and dreams), and is open to grace and enlightenment - to the literal presence of God.

And yet we are intuitively closed, bound up in our tight little worlds by cinched-up suppositions of what life is supposed to be.  Instead of trying to fix things, we would do well to open up and live here and now.  It can be freeing to release thoughts that we can and do know what is best, and that we should be able to pull the strings and capture it for ourselves - sort of like untying too-tight cords that were only assumptions all along.   

As I sit on the sidelines cheering for our friends and their son battling brain cancer, I pray for the Lord’s consolation, for His searching and saving love that exceeds earthly experience.  Even though the disease isn't licked, there is a greater reality: God's Divine Grace always shines in the darkness in proportion to the depth of suffering, healing the souls and spirits of those who bring their shattered hearts to Him. 

“How near You are in the days of illness;

You Yourself visit the sick.

You Yourself bend down to the bed of the sufferer

And the heart speaks to You.

In times of hardship and suffering,

You illumine the soul with peace;

You send unexpected help.

You are consoling, searching and saving love,

And to You we sing the song: Alleluia.”

-Akathist of Thanksgiving, Kontakion 8