Beyond Being Broken

12	Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon:
13	therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant.
14	And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters’ vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit. –Isaiah 30:12-14 (KJV)

Being broken is a circumstantial condition.  We feel broken due to the culmination of our circumstances.  Based on what has transpired, we feel a sense of brokenness.  We even take on the state of brokenness by taking personal ownership of living shattered and fragmented lives as badges of our broken lives of torment and terror.  We live as broken men and women.

I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. – Psalm 31:12 (ESV)

We do not have to live that way.

You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. – Psalm 139:3 (NIV)

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. – Psalm 34:18 (NIV)

He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom and broke away their chains. – Psalm 107:14 (NIV)

O LORD, truly I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant; you have freed me from my chains. – Psalm 116:16 (NIV)

He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. – Psalm 147:3 (NLT)

I wrote Broken Pieces out of my own agony and pain.  As I look back at it, I realized that what I penned in pain was not just for my own sake.  I published this collection and Lamentations in the Storm as I wandered through a deep fog of misery and melancholy much like Broken Pieces.  Both poetic works reveal that we do not have to live broken lives once god has set us free.  These poems and prayers express the depth of life in despair and how faith can carry you through in order to endure through life’s trials.

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It Happens to the Best of Us

It is good for me that I was afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes.
– Ps. 119:71 (NASB)

 Trouble comes your way.  You may not have done anything in particular.  Trouble found its way to you and now you have to deal with it.  That’s part of how things go down in life.  You may or may not be the cause of your trouble, but it’s right there in your face with your name on it in bold.

The writer of this psalm helps to understand how some people have to be broken down in order to be built up.  Some have to be humbled before they are ready to accept help.  Others  have to be hindered in order to just stop where they are and see that they are in need of help.  In other cases, some folks have to be hurt before they can ever be ready to receive anything that resembles help.  You may not have experienced all of these different changes before God stepped in on your behalf, but I would suspect that you have at least experienced one of them.  Let’s be honest about that.

The issue isn’t whether you had to experience any of these.  The true burning issue is whether you learned the lesson or not.  The psalmist said that his affliction provided an opportunity to learn God’s statutes, His decrees, His Law.  We are not told whether he went into deep, secluded personal Bible study and devotional time during this period or whether he meditated on what he could recall of the Law of the Lord, but it does say that he learned God’s statutes at this point due to being afflicted.  Did you learn your lesson? Did it drive you to seek out His Word? Did it lead you to Him? Check the record today.

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