The Broken

The world is full of brokenness. I see it every day in my clinic. Advanced cervical cancer again and again. It’s getting young women with children and families, older women widowed and raising grandhchildren. The cancer doesn’t care who they are. It just grows and consumes them. I’ve gotta look them in the eyes and give them “the talk”. Infertility again and again. Didn’t know that those times of pleasure then would cause them so much pain now. But sexual diseases have scarred the tubes shut and I can’t fix them. I can’t give them a baby. I’ve gotta look her in the eyes too, and give her “the talk”. Mothers, or women who want to be mothers, pregnant so many times, but lost them all. Stillborn twice, three died within a week of birth, the only one that lived died at age of five. I’ve gotta look her in the eyes, and here comes “the talk”. It varies a bit to fit the need of the moment, but the beginning of the talk is always starting from the same point – hopelessness. And the end of it is leading to something that often seems out of grasp – hope. Maybe circumstances haven’t led you to that point of having been drained of expectation of any good, or of any joy. But they likely will. So let me tell you the introduction for what you are going to need to know on that day. Maybe you can remember and reflect. I don’t know why bad things happen like this. I mean, theologically, I do know. But sometimes you just can’t make sense of it. This is a hard day. You are hearing hard things. And it seems like there is no hope left. But I want to tell you that on the very best days and on the very worst days, there is hope. There is a God who can be trusted no matter what the circumstance is. He is able to be trusted with the circumstances of this world, and with all that is to come when this life is over. He sent His Son down to show us who He is, and to bring hope to the desperate. He Himself lived a life of sorrow, and He can comfort you in your sorrow. You need to understand who Christ is, He is the only hope…

Really, that is the most important conversation that I have. And sometimes it feels so helpless, like you wish you could do something more, but you can’t. Ultimately we all need a bigger, better hope than this limited world has to offer. Life is going to let us down. It’s going to ask us for more than we want to give, take more than we ever would have allowed, and sometimes pour on more than we can bear. But there’s something better to come. Where brokenness is made whole, healing is complete, joy comes without sorrow, and life does not end in death. In fact, life there does not end at all. There we will see for the first time since generations and generations ago, what creation looks like without the mar of sin. The worries of this life will be but distant memories, wisps too small to be remembered in light of the One who will satisfy and sustain us in full. Let every broken moment make us long and yearn for that day.