Tag: Brokenness

Calamity, Grace, Hope, Lightheartedness, mercy, Psalm 57, Repairing broken things, Uncategorized

Calamities and Grace

kathymfindley

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Psalm 57 has been called “a prayer of safety from enemies.” When we believe that danger threatens to harm us, body and soul, that is the time that makes us cry out to God with the fervency of the Psalmist. Hear the Psalm’s second verse.

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me!
For my soul trusts in You;
And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge,
Until these calamities have passed by.

Ah, the calamities! So ever-present with us in uncertain times. Calamities! The synonyms are many and ominous:

Disaster, catastrophe, tragedy, cataclysm, crisis, adversity, blight, tribulation, woe, affliction, evil.

And those are just the first few listed in my trusty Thesaurus. There are many more, describing a state of being that is frightening, all-consuming and dangerous. Such a state of being we want to avoid at all costs. We want to take refuge swiftly before evil overtakes us.

Can you recall a time when your life was in calamity mode? So many situations can place us in calamity mode: illness, relationship problems, addictions, loneliness, aging, financial distress, the loss of a loved one and so many other situations of distress.

We feel as if “enemies” are chasing us, unrelenting in their threat. We run like the wind, if we can, to get away from them. But all too often, we look behind us and an “enemy” is right there, looming large before us and bringing us face to face with the cataclysm we feared. So we are now in the clutches of adversity, and we wonder if where we are is where we’ll ever be.

We are very good at laying out our calamities, lining them up one by one for all to see. Because when others see our calamities, we believe they will help us. We believe that our friends can help us escape our calamity du jour. In their help, we place our hope. Trouble is, sometimes we’re disappointed because hope does not often come through friends. Those around us have their own calamities. When they don’t (or won’t) reach into our troubled place and help us, we despair. What can we do? Where will we turn?

The truth is that when our soul trusts in God, we will wake up from our nightmare and find that we are sheltered in the shadow of God’s wings. Safe from calamity. Nestled in a place of refuge. Brokenness repaired. Watching gratefully as calamity after calamity passes us by.

What a grace is that! What unmitigated compassion! What sheer loving mercy from the God who might just as well have left us in the danger of our calamities.

Thanks be to God for every safe refuge, from every calamity. Amen

Brokenness, Hope, Mission, Prayer, Repairing broken things

On Being Fixers

kathymfindley
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A Broken World: For those who have lost their lives to terrorism in the twenty first century
By Rennett Stowe on Flikr

I certainly do not want to put out pessimistic vibes, but from what I observe, the world and its inhabitants are standing in the need of prayer. Children and parents at the border are still hopelessly separated. The Trump administration continues to cozy up with the world’s tyrants and dictators. Wildfires ravaged a Greek village, and continue their destruction in other parts of the world. Scores of people are hopelessly addicted to opioids, with very little assistance available to them. Veterans of our many wars are still homeless, scouring the streets for shelter, food and care. Elderly citizens of this nation cannot afford the medications prescribed for them. Growers and farmers assess their crops and contemplate how to navigate the very real effects of climate change, while U.S. leadership continues to deny that climate change has any devastating effects. Shall I go on, or spare us all from an endless and ominous list of broken things?

We need a fixer, an all purpose, jack-of-all-trades fixer that can fix the gamut of broken things. The dilemma is worse, though, because werry does not stop at a broken world. In that broken world — in every frenetic city and in every quiet hamlet — we find broken people, heartbreaking broken people. But even as our heart breaks, we look at the brokenness with our hands tied because the remedies are far too complicated. Prayer is a definite option for such a time. My new friend, Maren, has written a poignant prayer on her blog. This is the beginning of her prayer.

God, who is never in earthquake
not wind, not wildfire,
but comes walking across storms,
speaking with a still small voice
holding those who fear,
comforting those who grieve,
hear the prayers of the world . . . 

By Maren; Prayer for Lombok — Indonesia
https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/prayer-for-lombok-indonesia/

Prayers are necessary. Awareness is critical. Reaching out in specific, authentic ways is imperative. Yet, we still need a fixer, or at least a place to find hope and comfort. I always turn to the words of the prophet Isaiah for hope, while at the same time, I understand — with just a bit of reticence, fear and trembling — that Isaiah’s remedy points directly back to me.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of joy instead of mourning,
a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated;
they will repair the broken cities
that have been devastated for generations.

— Isaiah 61:1-4 

There’s the catch, the description of the fixer as one who has first been anointed by the Lord and then is sent. That would be me, and you, fixers all!

May God anoint us as we go into all the broken places and draw near to all the broken people.

Brokenness, Courage, Despair, Faith, grief, healing, Hope, Kintsugi, Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, Repairing broken things, Tikkun Olam, Wholeness

Whole Again

kathymfindley

23A0B57C-5487-4E6C-B48B-C45552916C23So many people have been broken. I join them in their brokenness, for I, too, have been broken. Not just once, but again and again. So I know how it feels to look down in the dust at my feet and see the shards of a broken spirit. I know the emotional response I have when I sit on the ground examining the broken shards, and I know how I despair of the daunting  task of putting the broken pieces back together.

I know the fear of doubting that I will even be able to put them together again. I know the terror of believing that my broken life will forever be broken. I know the suffocating feeling of having been broken beyond repair, without hope, without the faith I will need to repair my own brokenness.

And then, we look at our world, lamenting its groaning in so many ways and in so many places around the globe. Ours is a world that seems broken into pieces. I often find encouragement in the Jewish concept known as Tikkun Olam, a phrase found in the Mishnah that means to heal or repair the world. While Tikkun Olam is used today to define social action and the pursuit of social justice, the phrase has ancient roots with origins in classical rabbinic literature. It means so much more than examining broken pieces and finding a “glue” that might possibly put them back together.

Rabbi Yitzchak Luria* pondered the world’s brokenness and came to believe that, even before time, something must have gone terribly wrong with the world. As he continued to mull it over in his mind, he proclaimed that the world had shattered. He taught that we are anointed to repair a world which he defined as “all that is eternal,” insisting that “at the very core of reality is G-d’s shattered dream, waiting for us to pick up the pieces.”

Things break. The world breaks. Dreams break. We break. Such is the reality we know. And yes, we can become disconsolate as we take on the task of putting the pieces back together again. But there is a higher truth, a more noble calling than just putting together broken pieces. It is the calling to make things whole again, to make the world whole again, to make your spirit whole again.

In Scripture, we find many stories of persons being made whole. Each one looks like a miracle. Remember the story of the woman who had suffered for twelve years?

A woman, who was very ill for twelve years, came behind Jesus, and touched the hem of his garment: For she said within herself, “If I but touch his garment, I shall be whole.”

Jesus turned about, and when he saw her, he said, “Daughter, be of good comfort; your faith has made you whole.” And the woman was made whole from that hour.

— Matthew 9:20-22

Surely it was a miracle that this woman received. But for us, miracles are rare. We are burdened heavily by the brokenness, usually without the benefit of miracles. So what is it around you that is broken? What broken shards do you have before you? A broken relationship? A broken faith community? A broken dream? Is your city broken? Your nation? Your world? Or it it your own spirit that lies in broken pieces at your feet?

I cannot promise you a miracle. Even so, you must pick up the broken pieces and get started. You may get a little help from the people in your life. Then again, they may offer no help at all. But I do know that you have within yourself all the strength you need to take what is broken, put the pieces back together and find yourself whole again.

She is a beautiful piece of broken pottery, put back together by her own hands. And a critical world judges her cracks while missing the beauty of how she made herself whole again.

— J.M. Foster

The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery is called kintsugi. Repaired with pure gold, the Japanese art embraces the imperfections of the broken object. The flaws are seen as a unique part of the object’s history, which adds to its beauty. The glistening gold cracks are seen as very lovely features of the pottery, and Japanese artists say that the pottery is even stronger at the broken places. 

And so are we!

* https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3593030/jewish/Fallen-Sparks.htm