HOPE

We all have experienced brokenness at times in our lives! No one is exempt.

Job cries out in anguish as the pain of brokenness overwhelms him, " Let the day perish on which I was born. And the night which said, 'A boy is conceived'" (Job. 3:3).

Bob Dylan seemed to capture the sentiments of Job in one of his classic songs "Everything is Broken"

Broken bottles, broken plates,

Broken switches, broken gates,

Broken dishes, Broken parts,

Streets are filled with broken hearts.

Broken words words never meant to be spoken, 

Everything is broken.

The farther you are on the journey of life the more you see the "messiness of life:" sorrows, disappointments, unrealized dreams, broken relationships, addictions that have so disfigured a loved one they are barely recognizable.

Gerald Manley Hopkins asks, "O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed...so cogged, so cumbered?"

Johnny Cash's life came to a grinding halt; having lived life in the fast land for decades, his life was ready to crash and burn. Johnny Cash noted that he tried everything, and everything had failed him. However, those old-time hymns that he learned on his mother's knee would speak to him during his darkest nights:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

The Old Testament Prophet Isaiah tells us that we are like sheep who have gone astray, wandering from the Shepard---and God the Father has laid our sin upon His son (Isaiah. 53:6).

The HOPE and CURE for our brokenness is found in a restored relationship with our God. Sin has separated us from God, and man lives in this broken relationship with his creator until he comes back and allows God to restore this broken and damaged relationship.

Let me share a link to the "lift me up" song, by "The Afters," very uplifting and encouraging. God can restore and give us hope when all seems hopeless: The Afters new video, "Lift Me Up"