“Melt our Cold hearts let tears fall like rain
Come change our love from a spark to a flame”
Graham Kendrick – Beauty for Brokenness
This week is Homelessness and Poverty week. Perhaps you knew maybe you did not. As we consider the needs of others are we becoming immunised and sanitised to the needs of our world and community. Images are beamed directly into our homes of broken lives and lands almost daily and I wonder "are we affected and infected by the desperation of others?" Are statistics of poverty, homelessness and brokenness mere fragments of our imagination - sadly no behind ever statistic is a person - desperate, scared, lonely and vulnerable.
It is of course hard, desperately hard, to slight the plight of others when we are broken ourselves. We avoid the issue - paint on a smile and say the words "I'm fine" whilst inside we are screaming "why don't you notice." Do we avoid because there is no support? Avoid for we feel we have failed? Avoid for being condemned and judged? How heartbreaking that is.
Henri Nouwen wrote in his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, that "it is often difficult to believe that there is much to think, speak or write about other than brokenness". I am not sure how often I have heard this preached about or taught about in our churches - oh how we avoid it. Charles Dickens wrote "We need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts".
The bible provides us with so many stories where tears have been shed.
Hannah poured out her soul to God in prayer over her barrenness. Micah wept in prayer for God’s people. Jeremiah wept in prayer over the sin and pain of God’s people.
Psalm 126:5-6 Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting. He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him” The woman washing Jesus feet wet them with her tears, Jesus wept for his friend and there are more.
In a beautiful book "My utmost for his highest" Oswald Chambers suggests "Prayer is the falling of a tear." In that case we pray alot don't we.
Jesus, God incarnate, was the man of sorrows. Isaiah 53:3, “He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows [pain], and acquainted with grief . . . ”.
Not removed and not remote but in the midst, centre of our pain and our world.
So in our brokenness we come to worship and surrender. In our brokenness we come to the source of healing the one who shines light into our lives that we may show light through the fragments of the cracks in our lives to others. Friends may you know the healing light of God's presence.
