God Mends Broken Things
He came running with tears in his eyes and pain on his face I had not seen before. His wrist was limp as he cradled it with his left hand.
“I fell and bent my arm, and it hurts really bad!”
He was afraid.
Thankfully, we were only a few minutes from home. We iced it, and I asked him to tell me where it hurt. He pointed to a specific spot and said, “Right here.” I knew then it was broken.
Maybe it was seeing him in that kind of pain. Maybe it was his ability to pinpoint exactly where it hurt. Maybe it was just fatherly instinct. It was likely all those things. But there was something else I knew deep inside—I knew what broken things looked like.
Everything Is Broken
Brokenness has a look. Shattered glass. A crumpled pile. Something snapped and frayed around the edges. There is no cleanness in brokenness. It looks raw, unfiltered, ruined. You know it when you see it. You feel it when it’s real.
That is not to say we deal with all broken objects the same way. Broken bones are hard to ignore. Other things are not. It takes something major to get our attention. Broken people living in a broken world get used to broken things. We learn to live with it, putting on a happy tune and going about our business. Bob Dylan’s 1989 song “Everything is Broken” is the perfect illustration. An up-tempo beat belies the meaning of the lyrics.
Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken.
Everything is broken, and we know it. Yet we still face each day with a certain denial of how broken it all truly is. That can be good, of course. We need not focus exclusively on what’s wrong. That’s no way to live and can even be an anti-Christian way to live (1 Tim. 4:4).
At the same time, we can only heal when we see and know what is broken. Billy Joel said he’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. But laughter can’t hold back the tears forever. Some unexpected suffering will eventually crash into all our lives. When that happens, and we sense time won’t heal our wounds, we need hope beyond the clock, beyond this life. Sinners eventually cry too, and the saints have answers. We are not mostly okay people with an occasional bad day. We are broken people with divine grace as our only hope.
Mending Broken Things
When the brokenness in our life grows beyond what we can endure, and we wonder how we will make it through the day, where do we go? We go to the Suffering Servant, of whom God said, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench” (Isa. 42:3). He is a gentle Healer who knows how to nurse us back to health.
Like Job, in times of great brokenness, we may begin to believe that there is a side of God we didn’t know before (Job 9:22–24). Maybe he wants us to suffer. Maybe he doesn’t love us as we thought he did. This feeling is especially real when we cannot discern the cause of our suffering—when we cannot attribute it to a certain sin or a certain area of necessary spiritual growth. When life just hurts for seemingly no reason, what are we to think about the character of God? Does God care about our brokenness?
Festo Kivengere, a Ugandan Anglican pastor, tells a story that helps answer these questions. “One day a little girl, who was watching her mother working in the kitchen, asked, ‘Mummy, what does God do all day long?’ For a while the mother was stumped, but then she said, ‘Darling, I’ll tell you what God does all day long. He spends his whole day mending broken things’” (Revolutionary Love, 67).
Our gentle God is not out to break us more; his eye is on our mending. But sometimes bones must be broken more to heal right. If your life is falling apart, it’s not an indication God doesn’t care. It may be proof that he does. He’s mending things you couldn’t see before. He’s doing work only God can do. Broken bones grow new threads that reach one for the other. When our spirit is broken before God, his Spirit reaches toward ours, mending broken things.
Our Future Is Incredibly Bright
There is hope for everyone hurting. There is a God above who sees and knows. He heard the Israelites’ cries in the bondage of slavery (Ex. 2:24). He saw the tears of Hagar (Gen. 21:17) and Hannah (1 Sam. 1:10) and David (Ps. 6:6–9). He gathered all of them up in his bottle (Ps. 56:8). He is near to the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds (Ps. 147:3).
He is more than a seeing God. He’s an answering one too. Somehow our future will be better because of all the pain. The glory will be brighter because of it (2 Cor. 4:17). Our brokenness will highlight God’s grace and mercy all the more. When we reach the end of ourselves, we will understand what others have meant in saying: you may never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
Look to the end of the story. What we wish we could delete from our lives, God doesn’t. Even at the end of time, when God brings heaven down to earth, he does not backspace, erase all that was, and start over. He restores. He redeems. “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain” (Isa. 65:25). He will mend all that is twisted and broken in this world, in his creation, and in you, if you trust him to do so. The future of this world—broken though it is—is incredibly bright.
The End of All Things
The story of your life and mine is a story of one broken encounter after another. It starts when we’re conceived, bent by sin in our mother’s womb (Ps. 51:5). We add sin to sin and break hearts along the way. We shatter bones. We destroy hopes. We go from one pile of bricks to another. We learn to live with it, but deep inside, we know we need healing. God only knows how deep the healing must be. That’s why heaven will be so grand. We will meet our God who is worthy to open the scroll because he was slain and by his blood purchased us for eternity with him (Rev. 5:10). Our brokenness is so deep only the death of Jesus can mend it.
Your brokenness may feel un-mendable right now. I’ve been there too. But remember, there is a God above who spends his days mending broken things. Maybe your brokenness is too deep to put into words. Your life is shattered. You can’t see past today, and you don’t want to face tomorrow. You cannot imagine a way out. The rock has rolled over the opening, and no sunlight peeks through the cracks. Hello darkness, my old friend.
But there is a Light. There is a Savior. There is one who knows the grave you’re in. They put him there too. Jesus is a God who knows what broken things look like. He was crucified, but he has risen. He is going before you now to prepare a place where broken things heal, where sons and daughters shall prophesy, old men shall dream dreams, and young men shall see visions. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Joel 2:28, 32).
You may be broken in some bottomless pit. Who isn’t? But as Corrie ten Boom reminds us, “No pit is so deep that He is not deeper still; with Jesus even in our darkest moments, the best remains and the very best is yet to be.”
According to the wise providence of God, my boy’s wrist will heal on its own. The body began reconstruction soon after the break. It built a protective hedge around it with blood and swelling and calluses. In a few weeks, he’ll be good as new. Some think a broken bone is stronger after healing. The evidence doesn’t bear that out. But one thing we know for sure: healing is possible. God has made it so.
He has made it so for you as well.
David McLemore is an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons and one daughter. Read more of David’s writing on his blog, Things of the Sort.