Broken Within, Blessedness Begins

LONELY variance to joy, sorrow beyond compare, a rising anger for the fact of experience; a reality of life all too common. We all have our bad days, grating hours, and moments of insanity. All ‘bargains’ of living the human existence. We are, due the fall, broken vessels, and forlorn, but for God’s abiding grace — but we must abide if he is to abide in us — if we are to receive any divine help at all. God will not force us one iota.

Broken within is where blessedness begins:

We know when we are weak,

We are so angry we cannot speak,

Right now we have no hope,

Right now no hope to cope.

But waiting on the Lord,

We find is all we can afford,

He who helps us beyond our sins:

Brokenness is where blessedness begins.

AT THE END IS THE BEGINNING

Concepts of salvation and glory are almost always paradoxical — upside down to our logic. It doesn’t mean we go into illogicality instead of logicality, but it does mean God’s logic is different to ours.

Our logic commends us to desperation when we are at the end of ourselves — when everything we have tried is rendered useless. But God uses desperation as a lock into the Kingdom; and, every lock has a key. That key, for this circumstance of desperation, is surrender.

The further we are taken away from God, the closer we actually are. One about-face and there he is, more amenable than ever!

The fact is, when we are most spiritually perturbed, two polar opposite things are possible: 1) we might stubbornly resist any force acting on us and, therefore, resist God’s invitation to break the deadlock, or 2) we might finally submit to the only help that is available.

Submission is wisdom and stubbornness is folly. Submission seems weak, but it is actually strength personified. Stubbornness insists on believing one’s own way is best. Frustration ensues.

***

The best, most serene hope when we feel most broken is to submit to God.

When we submit to a force that can only be good, ultimately we have made a wise choice, no matter how much it seems to cost us in the early going.

What doesn’t work is to continue to rail against God and life. We know it only makes us angrier. What works is to go against what seems logical — to surrender our pitiful strength so as to have God make his peculiar strength of grace available to us.

Brokenness, as it is acknowledged, is closest of all human states to truth.

Because God’s blessedness loves brokenness, being broken within is where blessedness begins.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.