Broken

What does it mean to be broken? I was at a park the other day and it is amazing the number of injuries that take place. At times when I hear a child’s response to his injury I wonder if I should call 911. With their loud screams I think they may have to amputate, that injury is definitely going to leave a mark.

Our children have bumps or bruises and I am always amazed at the healing power of band-aids. They bring me their bruises as if a band-aid was invented to cover a purple and black spot. They can be in such pain that their life seams like it is hanging in the balance. Their behavior makes me think it is touch and go and yet when I put the band-aid on the injury that seemed life threatening suddenly seems like nothing. They get that band-aid and they are back to whatever it was that caused the injury in the first place.

In Isaiah 61 the second thing that Jesus tells us he came to do was bind up the broken hearted. The word bind up is defined as to restrain or bandage. The heart that is pointed to is not some love interest but is our very nature, our core being, our identity. So Jesus came to bandage who we are. I love that picture because it makes me look at my children’s request for a band-aid when one seems unnecessary in a different way.

When my children have pain and hurt and they approach me for a band-aid they are playing out a scene that should be all too familiar, me approaching my Savior looking for a band-aid. We are all broken in some way and Jesus came to bind that up, to hold that together until His return. What a wonderful picture. Maybe next time I won’t be so quick to dismiss my children when they ask for a band-aid.

Being Well

Where does this idea come from? What does it mean to be well? Healed? At what point in ones existence would they, could they have such a stamp of wellness on their life?

Last night my wife and I were watching a television program about a young lady and her swimming. She called herself disabled and I asked my wife to tell me why she thought such a thing. Why is she using that word? Was she different then me? Certainly. She was different than what we might call the average or norm, but why is being different from the average or norm disabled? I thought that just made you different?

Now I have no problem with a person getting special privileges to make their life more manageable because they are different but why must it be disabled? What about us tell us this is disabled? Is this to hide that we are all disabled in some way?

Do you strive to be normal? As a Christian do you have some normal, right upstanding picture in your head of what the ideal normal average Christian looks like? Why do you think we have that? Is there really such a thing? Should we strive for this image or is it something our culture teaches us, not God?

I don’t know, that is why I ask. Paul says look at his example but I’m not sure he is talking about wellness. I think he is talking about a way of life. You see I think somewhere we crossed from a healthy believer being one who is working to bring glory to God to a healthy believer is one who has all of life together. I don’t know if that is really true though.

What if David is the normal everyday average follower of our God? What if Abraham in all his attempts to help God with the promise is right down average lane? What if Peter is the prototypical Christ-follower? What if the church in Corinth is more normal than any could imagine? What would that do to our measuring stick? Our expectations?

What if their willingness to follow marked average? What if their willingness to seek in spite of their failings and foibles is what marked them in their lives?

I don’t know, what If we became the people we think we want to be, I wonder if we would end up very vanilla, very boring and very unable to relate to others? Everyone would look and act the same because they had all made it to the same place. Wouldn’t that be true? Isn’t the idea presented that we as Christians are suppose to be striving for some Christian ideal of behavior, excising the problems of our past?

What if the problems make us more valuable in the kingdom? What if healing is less about fixing us, getting us past these problems, and instead is about showing how even with them we can live and function and are held together and have a place where we will finally be restored?

If Jesus came to give us hope, a home where we truly will be without defect, why is it that we become frustrated when we discover we are not home yet? I don’t know, these are in the end just the thoughts that run through my brain, that keep me up at night, that make me think.

Why?

Why do you believe? What reason would you give if someone asked?

Would that reason make sense to someone who didn’t believe or would it only sound good to those who already have put their faith in Jesus Christ?

Peter tells the believers that they should be ready to make a defense to anyone who asks for the reason they have hope (1 Peter 3:15). Now I don’t know about you but how many people have ever asked you about the hope you have? Do people think they already know why? Do they even understand that Jesus has given us hope or do they think He gave us a way to avoid the “f” word? I don’t know, I just ask.

Like so many biblical statements this is one that can easily fit whatever pet doctrine or belief you have. This becomes be ready to give a defense of why you don’t use instruments, why you believe we will be raptured and the list could go on.

Is that healthy? Is that part of the problem? Do we understand hope?

Whenever I ask myself why I come back to creation. I need absolutes. The problem is that what many people rely on doesn’t seem like absolutes but arbitrary. As a kid growing up I had a real hard time with a God who was consumed with the number of times I took a pinch of cracker who obsessed over the frequency but didn’t seem to be bothered that we took it out of some fancy stainless still plate with a paper doily on the bottom.

It was called truth and I was told I should defend it but I must confess that if that was truth and that was what kept the world together it didn’t fit my reality.

I wonder if people struggle with truth today not because of truth but because of what so many have called truth?

In the end I believe because the Bible does the best job of telling me why everything is how it is, broken and damaged. It does the best job of explaining why no matter how hard I try my relationships are not always right and my actions aren’t always noble. It explains why, even though I can’t fix it, I long for its repair. It always points to Jesus.

In the end I figured out that it explains why I have hope because I believe a day will come when everything is fixed and made new, not just because the Bible says it is so but because creation says it is so and the Bible agrees. Not because I have better facts, truth transcends all religions, but because Jesus has won and promised repair. Repair of myself and creation. A repair I long for but can never consummate. A longing that points to the reality of Jesus Christ.

God was God long before my English Standard Version was published and he will be God after the next new translation hits the bookshelves. Hope has much more depth than whether or not you and I agree on the book of Revelation.

Hope is what our world needs and yet who looks to the church for hope anymore? Entertainment? I don’t know, assistance? Maybe but what about hope?

Why do you have hope? Do we do a good job sharing hope? If not what should we do differently?