Broken Things

Broken Things

Lately I’ve been confronted with broken things. A broken gate. A broken window. A broken paisley plate that fell from the top shelf of a wobbly bookcase. And just this week, a fifteen-foot limb that broke away from my neighbor’s tree one night and landed with a loud crash not two feet from my front steps.

The gate and window were quickly repaired. The plate broke into three almost-neat sections, although I can’t locate a few small edge pieces needed to glue it back together. The branch I dragged over to the side of the yard between our two houses, and my neighbor kindly sawed it into kindling and stacked it away. But I can’t quite escape the feeling that I’m in the vortex of some invisible wind that is swirling wildly around me. And breaking things apart.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” writes Irish poet W. B. Yeats in “The Second Coming.” But I challenge his conclusion. I believe it can and does. The center holds because the beautiful Son is at the center, holding all things together: “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17, NASB).

Circumstances at the edges can be perilous, yes. Things are broken. They crash and fall and shatter. But the center is strong. The center holds. Or better, it is held.

The challenge is to celebrate the mending, not mourn the pieces. To be thankful for the repairs and not lament (at least not for long) the breaking. The challenge is to believe—even before things are put right—that rightness is near and possible and that it will come. Broken things will be mended: one day even our own hearts’ cracks and fault lines will be flawlessly fixed and stronger for it.

Because my God loves broken things. Even me.

Although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.

Colossians 1:21-22, NASB