Weakness and Brokenness

It is sometimes hard to walk through life and feel like your life is a mess and a bunch of contradictions. There is a subtle pressure, somtimes overt pressure, in church to put on your best Sunday Smile and show everyone that you are OK and have things together. The fact is that I am messed up, broken and don't have it together.

I came accoss a great essay that addresses these concerns by Michael Spencer over at the Internet Monk. The essay is called When I am Weak and I think if more of us could have such honesty as we looked at our messed-up-broken-down-heaps-of lives-we would could walk in much greater freedom and experience the grace that only Jesus can bring. I think we so often don't get it that we can't be good enough. So we pretend that everything is OK all the time and we build a false picture of who we are. I know I can portray a false picture of righteousness and OK-ness. This essay talks about why we must embrace our brokenness and never be Good Christians. I think sometimes the words that Jesus says in Mark 2:17 are hard to grasp: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” I think we all want to be Healthy in how we view ourselves. There is always someone worse off than us. But we all are "sick" and if we think we are "healthy" or "righteous" in our own right, we are fooling ourselves.

So I am going to trying to be OK with my broken-down, dysfunctional life. Jesus came for people like me who don't need to pretend that we have it all together; we don't have to feel healthy. I just need to know Jesus brings grace to me and I can live in the midst my own messiness. I need to embrace the message in
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."