A Burden of Brokenness

For fifty minutes three days a week, I sit among a body of over two thousand people.  Broken people.

That's our state, our predicament: brokenness.  Sin has permeated our being, our thoughts, our actions, and our very existence.  Brokenness has many faces.  But we have adapted to conceal its presence.

Walk into a room of people and you may not notice brokenness is lurking in the shadows.  Earlier this week, three testimonies were shared in chapel; three stories of brokenness: death, failure, insecurity.  I was overcome by the brokenness I knew to be concealed behind masks of security and invulnerability among two thousand people who shared similarly unique stories of brokenness.

The weight of the burden of two thousand broken people seems too much to bear at times.  Indeed it is too much.  Tears crept down my face for quite some time as I contemplated the weight of brokenness in community.

Despite the presence of brokenness, when accepted as reality, it is purposed for mending.  It is in the acceptance of brokenness that restoration is possible.  So it is with the believer, whose brokenness finds healing by His grace.

The stories of a community expound the burden of brokenness and magnify the significance and power of healing grace, mercy and love.