Brokenness

This article came up which I wrote a year ago on my journal app. With a little editing I decided to share it. I have written a couple other pieces using the same theme, so hope the readers can bear with it. The Lord impressed this inspiration on me during a trip to the Smokey Mountains in North Carolina. I was going through a difficult time in life, and there alongside the stream, while seeing the broken rocks and beauty of nature, the Lord showed me what He does with our brokenness. The way a mountain stream brings life to a once barren landscape; so is the life and beauty when we allow God’s healing stream to flow through our lives.

Brokenness

The stream tumbles its way down the rock-strewn creek. Over time the running water has smoothed and polished the stones, removing the rough and sharp edges. The trees bending over the stream draw their life from the water and the moss which has formed on the stones gives them a look of timeless beauty. The sound of the stream mingles with the soft breeze, as the water laughs and chuckles, while tumbling down the mountain side. At times the stream moves quietly and slowly through pools, while other times the steep terrain causes it to be turned into a foaming white spray. Looking around you see many broken rocks, shoved up through the earth as squeezed and crushed by a mighty hand.

Many people come to the mountains to sit beside the stream to take in the beauty of nature. God has given man an eye for this type of beauty, and many people find it brings rest to the soul. In reality, this is the scene of brokenness. The broken rocks, the mountains, the strewn boulders are all evidence of a literal broken world. That which at one time no doubt was a perfect landscape, was turned into a place of ugly, broken rocks and boulders.

Imagine for a moment what it would have looked like in its broken form. Take away the trees, the moss, and the water and what do you have? A stark bare mountainside; a bunch of sharp broken rocks and boulders. No life-giving stream, nothing but a bunch of broken rocks. In the beginning that is what it looked like, before the stream, before the trees and the moss.

The life is in the water. As it flows it smooths the broken rocks, bringing moisture so that the trees, mosses, and flowers can grow, while birds and animals can have water to drink. The forest is the place which birds, animals and people find shelter, safety, and solitude.

This scene is much like many who have been through hardships. Too many people remain a broken landscape without water, and their lives reflect their stark brokenness. How many are like this mountain scene in their hearts, in which circumstances beyond their control, or poor choices have left them broken in feelings and emotions. Many people try to hide this brokenness thinking that they will then be able to go on and live normal lives, but so many find they cannot hide.

God has a way of taking the broken things of this world to change them into something beautiful for all to see. He would like to change that with his life giving, healing water. As we come to Jesus with our brokenness, He can change our broken landscape with his healing stream of love and forgiveness. Those who allow His healing stream to flow through their lives become something beautiful to behold. The healing which that stream brings is truly the most amazing transformation of soul and spirit.

Sin and God’s wrath are what initially and literally broke the world. It is also God’s love that is able to restore His creation to a place of beauty that the eye can behold.

Luke 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

Isaiah 35:5-7 KJV 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. 7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.