Brokenness Part II

One of my earliest posts when I started this over a year ago was written after I lost a professor and mentor of mine to cancer. That loss, while difficult, was easier to deal with than this more recent tragedy of losing my pastor, and friend, Kyle Lake.

After re-reading that post on brokenness I feel obligated to follow it up with additional thoughts.......

Henri Nouwen goes on to say in his book Life of the Beloved that "when people come together they easily focus on their brokenness. The most celebrated musical composition, the most noted painting and sculpture, and the most read books are often direct expressions of the human awareness of brokenness. This awareness is never far beneath the surface of our existence..."

I would have to add one expression of brokenness to Henri's list.

Us.
The skin-on-bones, walk-around-numb, unsure/uncollected/unusually awkward Us.
We are the created art forms of God's expression of love and brokenness.
We are broken because we are human. Not because God made us that way.
We chose to be broken.
When we chose, scratch that, choose ourselves over God we uniformly throw away everything complete, whole and unbroken that we have available to us.
Adam and Eve is not a myth.
It happens every day.
We discard the truth and believe the lies and allow our broken, mangled ways navigate us through life and then, exasperated and annoyed, wonder where God is when we screw things up.
It's a vicious cycle.

refrain: We are the created art forms of God's expression of love and brokenness.

So.......How do we live in this tension of God's grace, love and mercy vs. our brokenness, selfishness and total lack of self-esteem?

I don't know.
Neither do you.
But we try.