Broken

THIS WEEK was very eventful. After Tuesday everything was unusually relaxed, because I had a rare break from my architecture work. I haven't been to the studio in days. I got to go to my first Gator game, which we won to Tennessee 33 to 23.

But I had to work for that break. The first half of this week was insane. All weekend, Monday and Tuesday I spent most of my time working in the studio on my final project. Tuesday I was working for 13 hours from noon to 1:00 AM. Then my escort bus left me. Then my phone died. A Teacher's Assistant drove me back to my room, and I got to sleep around 3 to wake up at 5:30 the next day.

It was just one of those days (and nights). It can't all be easy, I suppose. When my bus left me I was really upset. After rushing to catch it with my shoes practically flying off my feet, I felt like God didn't answer my prayer, and I didn't know why.

But when I got to my room, my room mate Sarah gave me a big hug and had some dinner ready for me. She decorated the box with encouraging things like "You did it!" and "Welcome home!" as well as a reference to Isaiah 41:10.

God makes a big promise to His people in Isaiah 41:9-10. "[9] You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest regions, and said to you, 'You are My servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away: [10] Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'"

When I read this, I heard God say, "Don't believe it? Look up." So I looked up and saw the verse I had written on the white board, Philippians 4:6-7. "[6] Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, [7] and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

If it isn't amazing that the all-seeing Almighty God promises to hold us by the hand, then nothing is amazing. It's not always easy to believe. When the bus leaves you, or when your loved ones say things to hurt you, or when you don't understand what you're called to do, it's easier to pull away and try to deal only in the things we understand, to try to make it through alone.

When everything is a mess, how can we trust God that He knows what He is doing? And when we feel far from Him, how can we believe He is close by?

Monday night my Life group was talking about love, especially God's love. My new friend Shannon told us about one of her favorite songs, which tells how God uses brokenness to reflect His mercy "a million different ways." When we are broken, she says, it's like light coming out from between the cracks of a pot that has been reassembled. Maybe God uses times of confusion and frustration to get our hearts ready to shine.

I remember once at FISH club in high school we finished reading a psalm that spoke about brokenness, and someone asked what it meant. I think it means being in a condition of humility before God as we acknowledge our need for Him. It means accepting our smallness and His greatness as our pride and self-sufficiency lay broken all around. And sometimes it takes tough times to get us to that place.

I've been reading the story of Abraham again lately. There's a lot to learn from it, but what stands out to me is Abraham's amazing faith. In Genesis 22, God asks him to sacrifice the son he has waited a long time to have, the son who is his promise of having a long line of descendants.

Abraham couldn't have understood why God was asking this or have wanted to obey. But his faith in God's goodness and his reverence for His power led him to obey anyway. And because he showed such faith and godly fear, God spared Abraham and promised to bless Abraham's descendants abundantly. As it turns out, we are the children of Abraham because we are the descendants of his faith in God. When He said "In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed," He was talking about when He would give His own Son to us so that we could live by faith as well.

Abraham was broken before God, and God values brokenness like that. He even called Abraham His friend.

In Psalm 51:16-17 the psalmist prays, "[16] For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. [17] The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart - these, O God, You will not despise."

This means that God sees us for what our hearts are like. He is looking for things like humility and love, justice and mercy, people to worship Him in Spirit and truth. He doesn't want to see us acting like we've got this God thing figured out. The whole point of salvation is living continually like we know how far we have left to go, and that only God can get us there.

Paul explains this really well in 2 Corinthians 4:6-7. "[6] For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. [7] But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us."

God, and God alone, has the power to do with us what we simply cannot do ourselves. The power is of him and NOT of us. He turned Saul, a Christian-killing enemy of the faith, into Paul, the greatest missionary in the history of the world. It took an encounter with God to change his life, so that he went on in total humility, calling himself "less than the least of all the saints" in gratitude and awe toward God.

With God, times of trouble and confusion often come right before moments of glory. He loves to use brokenness to show His power to fix things, as well as His power to overwhelm the odds. He wants us to have faith despite appearances and love without fear, and in return He will show the world a good reason for us to be that way. He dreams big, and He wants us to be part of reaching those dreams.

So maybe when the bus leaves without you, when you don't know where to go or what to do, when you've ended up broken on the floor once again, you're really in the best place you could be. Because once the illusion of our control is out of the way, there's room to see what God can do. When you've hit the low point, look up to God and see what He's doing now.