Strength in the broken place

To all who mourn in Israel he will give: Beauty for ashes; Joy instead of mourning; Praise instead of heaviness. For God has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for his own glory.   Isaiah 61:3 tlb

Ernest Hemingway once said, “The world breaks everyone, and some get strong in the broken places.” In this, he was right. Ours is an imperfect world. Your wife tells you that you are not the father of your son. A doctor says that you have an inoperable cancer and will lose your leg. Your son is arrested for shoplifting.

Everyone is broken eventually, but only some mend stronger because of it. “Out of the presses of pain,” wrote A.B. Simpson, “Come the soul’s best wine./The eyes that have shed no rain,/ Can shed but little shine.” When Amy Carmichael became an invalid because of a fall, she spent the next ten years of her life bedridden. Instead of crying out in anger, she ran to the Lord for strength and comfort. Those years, which she spent immobile, were some of her best as she wrote, counseled the unending stream of people who came to her, and prayed for India and the world.

When sickness put him in bed, L.B. Cowman put a map over his bed and prayed around the world. He also wrote of his suffering and how God met him. His wife’s book Streams in the Desert, was so loved by Chiang Kai Shek, the Chinese leader, that both this book and the Bible were placed in his casket at his death.

“Some get strong in the broken places,” said Ernest Hemingway, yet the broken places in his personal life, unmended by the Great Physician, resulted in his suicide. God gives strength in the broken place. He alone brings meaning out of brokenness.

Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman. Who despises a vile man but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps his oath even when it hurts, who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent. He who does these thigs will never be shaken. Psalm 15: 1-5