On Brokenness and Hope

This ol world is so broken. I don't think I used to know that. Does that mean I'm getting old?

Seriously, brokenness is such a part of life and will continue to be so as long as we're breathing earth's polluted air. "It never ends, does it?" Someone said to me recently upon hearing more sad news. No, it doesn't. It seems to grow by leaps and bounds with no end in sight. And it seems to get closer and closer home the older you get!

Yesterday, I got news of yet another death (someone who's relatives go to our church) and the sobs suddenly overcame me without warning. Grief and pain and heartache are real and sometimes unexplainable! How do you live with all the brokenness, I wondered? The older you get the more things you are going to see, the more people you are going to need to say good bye to. How does it not just consume your life and overcome you?

I had to think of my mom and all the many friends she said good bye to over the years. I know she lost more than one really dear friend, but I can't remember her ever sitting around grieving! I'm sure there was grief, I'm sure there was deep sadness and loneliness but never despair. The simple answer is Hope. She had Hope! I have Hope.

Today my heart is heavy over an entirely different kind of brokenness - the agony of knowing that someone has lost hope; someone who's faith is hanging by a thread; someone who is standing at the crossroads and I don't know which way they will choose. And suddenly my heart has been seared with this truth: This, THIS is what really deserves my tears and my grief and my agony! This is what deserves to consume me and overcome my very being!

It's ok to grieve the pain around us, don't get me wrong - the loss of loved ones, the trauma of those suffering from illness, the good byes that are so hard no matter what the circumstances..... God understands that, He wept over loss as well! But oh, people. Let it not consume me! May the cry of the hopeless overcome me and move me out of my selfish cocoon into some sort of action! Because to be without hope is, without doubt, the most broken place of all.