Broken

I see a lot of brokenness in my work. People whose health is broken, or who have a child whose health is broken and consuming all the family’s finances and time. Too often, marriages don’t survive the extreme ill health of a child, and the siblings are left feeling cut adrift and unloved.

Spiritual brokenness is also a difficult thing. When someone loses faith and trust in God, it can destroy his own life as well as the lives of those who love him. Such brokenness can end in complete despair, and spiral into self-harm including drugs, alcohol, promiscuous sex, divorce, and estrangement from parents, siblings, and children.

What causes broken relationships? How does this happen?

Jesus is more than brokenness

If  I knew all the different answers to that question, I suppose I could also come up with some workable solutions. Sometimes, you just can’t fix it.

I’m thinking of the broken relationships is the biblical family of Abraham and Sarah. Because Sarah was impatient for God’s promise of a  son, she offered her maid to her husband for him to conceive a child. Not God’s plan, and that’s usually the beginning of a very poor outcome. Hagar had Ishmael, but he was not the son of the promise God had made to Sarah and Abraham.  Ishmael and his mother ran away to the desert, and he became the father of the Arabian people, who have been at war with the descendants of Isaac, Sarah and Abraham’s son and the father of the Israeli people, ever since.

Who was at fault?  Sarah, for trying to “help” God. Abraham, for agreeing to beget a child with Hagar. What about Hagar?  Well, as I see it, she was pretty helpless in the situation; a slave, having no real power over her own life. Ishmael bears some blame, having grown up full of bitterness against his father Abraham, and believing he was the child of the promise. But it does very little good to go back and try to lay blame at this point. The hatred and warfare will be resolved only when Jesus comes back to earth as Messiah.

As with all brokenness, the hurting and the pain can be resolved only through the power of the Holy Spirit. Forgiveness, release of the desire for vengeance, repentance for one’s own part in the problem, seeking the will of God in all things–these are the answers to brokenness, and the path to healing.

But what if the people/person who hurt you so deeply are not receptive to healing?  Yes, that happens, and it’s very sad.  One can seek peace with God, no matter what other people may say or do, and live in the knowledge that God never fails us, leaves us, or turns His back on us.

Psalm 119: 165, “Great peace have they which love Thy law; and nothing shall offend them.”