I’ve been rereading Restoring Broken Things, one of the most helpful books I’ve found to describe the paradox of the gospel narrative. In the first chapter, Scotty Smith is describing a week of intensive marriage work he and Darlene did years ago in Arizona.
Every time I see a picture of the Grand Canyon now, or even hear it named, my knees get a little weak. I’ll always remember how God used the “brokenness” of that enormous chasm to help me connect with my own brokenness. And that’s exactly what that gigantic hole in the ground is—a broken portion of God’s magnificent creation… precious terra firma ravaged by years of erosion, sandblasting windstorms, and the ruthless power of the desert sun.
Every place and every thing Jesus created is broken. Nothing is today as it was meant to be in the beginning. The beauty of the Grand Canyon today is just an echo of the greater beauty the same piece of real estate manifest before sin and death entered Creation. Likewise, the holes in my heart and the multiple layers of decaying sediment in my marriage bore testimony to the ravaging effects of sin, death and life in a fallen world.
I was able to mask and micro-manage my brokenness for a long time… but ignored wounds, mismanaged emotions, idols of the heart, and squandered grace inevitably caught up with me. Marriage has more power than any other human relationship to reveal both our dignity and depravity… our beauty and our brokenness. There simply aren’t very many places to hide, at least for very long.
But Jesus doesn’t draw attention to the broken places in our lives to humiliate us, but rather to humble us and to heal us. He gives grace to the humble, not grades. As Darlene and I watched the sun transfigure layers of decaying sediment into kaleidoscopic beauty, I got a tiny glimpse of the beauty of brokenness—a glimpse that grew to a gaze the next week. Jesus shines the light of the gospel on us both to expose our brokenness (revealing the broken places in our lives) and to bring us to brokenness, (to honesty, humility and repentance).
I call this gospel brokenness, because only the gospel of God’s grace can enable us to be completely honest about our stuff without falling into toxic shame or self-contempt. And only the gospel can humble us, gentle us and give us the power to repent… and not run away or rant. When followers of Jesus walk openly in this kind of brokenness, gospel brokenness, angels in heaven rejoice… and people without faith, or those with much cynicism about Christians, are likely to reconsider the person and work of Jesus.
