Jesus: King of Broken Things

This is a blog about broken things. More than that, it's a blog about the all-encompassing love Jesus has for shattered people. The way He gathers the broken pieces of our lives and transforms those pieces into something beautiful.

For several years, I've grown increasingly frustrated with the Christian church. Instead of a haven for the broken, the suffering, and the downtrodden, the church has become a place where we plaster on "Sunday smiles", dress in our best clothes, and proclaim we're "too blessed to be stressed!" We present a perfect façade to the world, hiding the truth: that we're broken people who desperately need Jesus; that sometimes we struggle with our faith; that often we wonder why God lets bad things happen; that we thought all of our troubles would magically disappear once we became a Christian.

We bury our real selves, and present a mask--what we think a real Christian should look like. We hold ourselves up as (only) Defenders of Truth, forgetting that Jesus called us to be Extenders of Mercy, Extenders of Grace.

You all, Jesus is the King of Broken Things. He himself was broken: his body on the cross, his heart for people. How many times does the bible tell us Jesus was moved with compassion for the people around Him? He was moved by loneliness, by death, by illness.

He was not moved by the Pharisees and the Sadducees--the religious righteous of the day. In fact, they were the ones he condemned. The ones he called whited sepulchers with dead men's bones on the inside. The people who were experts in what was right and wrong.

Somewhere along the line we collectively decided that as Christians, we needed to appear perfect, even when we're anything but. As a result, we cut ourselves off from the very people who can help us--other believers--and we've made ourselves look like hypocrites to everyone else.

I think we're afraid to show others our true selves--especially after we become a Christian. After all, once we know Jesus, everything is easy. Right?

But what if it's not? What if we meet Jesus and life is still hard. What if we still get sick? What if people we love still die? What if we're still hungry or cold or alone?

Then we must be doing something wrong, right? Because life gets easy once we follow Jesus. And if it doesn't, then we're ashamed and we cover our brokenness the way Adam and Eve covered their bodies in the garden.

Shame makes us hide our real selves. But in doing so, we negate the cross. We rob our brothers and sisters of the honor of coming alongside of us and sharing our burden.

So I'd like to call us to an authentic life. Let's get off of Facebook and Pinterest. Let's stop measuring our worth against a standard no one can achieve. Let's start living as the beautiful, broken Christ-followers we are. Because God's light shines brightest through our broken places.