Broken

As I was straightening up my living room this morning, I paused and looked at the worn, black guitar case resting against the wall. My sister had given it to me when I mentioned to her that even though I am not the most musically inclined person, I'd like to know how to play a few simple worship songs.

The guitar belonged to the father of her children. It was one of the only physical things that remained besides the two boys, now active toddlers.

When I first opened the case, I was disappointed to see that the face of the guitar was cracked and dented. It looked pretty damaged to me, broken. Come to find out he had attempted to beat the living daylights out of my sister with it, but was apparently so high that he ended up hitting the wall among other things.

He was broken. A product of the system. A statistic. He brought his brokenness to my sister and she became broken too.

We are all broken, really. Some of us are just a lot 'less broken' than others. Some of us have found healing from Jesus. Others perpetuate the cycle of brokenness and continue to break and fracture others because that is all they know. It grieves my heart to see people hurting when there is a remedy. I pray for the broken man who gave me two beautiful nephews. I pray for my sister to be completely healed.

I had my musician friend look at the guitar and he said the damage was cosmetic; it hadn't lost its ability to play music.

There is hope, my friends, for the broken and the lost. Don't write them off as hopeless. Pray for people you know. Jesus entered our brokenness and responded to it with The Cross.

Don't look at the cracks and dents of others' lives and assume that God's redeeming love doesn't have the ability to enable their lives to be a sweet song. His love is relentless; it is restorative!

He causes us to sing a new song! Who's joining the choir with me??