Broken hearts

The Lord saw fit to lead me to several people with broken hearts this week. Brave smiles hid great sorrow. When I expressed compassion, the smiles disappeared and tears slid down their faces in silent testimony to the inner pain. The sources of their sorrow were greatly varied - but each had to do, in one way or another, with disappointment with God or others! Time was that I would have felt compelled to manage their pain, to try to 'fix' them up quickly. But no longer. "But, Jerry, isn't it your job to help people feel better?" I once thought so. Now I realize that if I attempt to make people feel better, I will almost certainly short-circuit God's holy work in their life, or I will insult them by trivializing their pain and/or problems with solutions that miss the need or for which they are not prepared.

Compassion does not always mean that we relieve people of their pain. It means that we come along side of them to help them carry the burden, offering our love, praying with them, encouraging them to do the hard work of seeing beyond the presenting symptoms to the source of the pain, and pointing them to Christ Jesus- the Healer of Broken Hearts. At the inauguration of His ministry, He quoted Isaiah's prophecy as the explanation of His mission. "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has appointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to announce that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come." Isaiah 61:1-2 (NLT)

God's prescription for broken hearts is not just relieving the ache, but working a genuine healing of the person! Tragically we are tempted deal with the pain of the soul in the same way we deal with our headaches! Got a headache? Take an aspirin! Never mind that the headache could be the signal of fatigue, allergies, or something serious. Just get rid of the pain. Similarly, there are many temporary pain-relievers for our aching hearts- diversions in pleasure, fanatical religious experiences, sex, drugs, alcohol, buying things.... but none of these really heal. God does heal us. Sometimes He does that by removing the source of the pain, but more often He does an even greater work, changing the one who hurts. C.S. Lewis in his essay, The Problem of Pain, includes this wonderfully provocative thought: Pain insists upon being attended to, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Got a broken heart this morning?
Does it hurt really badly, so terribly that you think you cannot stand another day?

Know this - God cares! Oh, I know - that makes you want to scream, doesn't it? You want to say, "If God cares, then why does He allow me to feel such an ache in my soul?" Trust me when I say that He is a good God, that your pain has not escaped His attention. The Word tells us that "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all." (Psalm 34:18-19, NIV)

Let me encourage you to two things today -
first, ask God to bring a friend, wise and compassionate, to your side to help bear the burden; and
second, weep hopefully and faithfully, asking Him for the grace to work with Him towards the healing of the whole person.

Meditate on this passage today -
"I said to myself, “This is it. I’m finished. God is a lost cause.”
I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness, the taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed. I remember it all—oh, how well I remember— the feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there’s one other thing I remember, and remembering, I keep a grip on hope: God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning.How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over). He’s all I’ve got left. God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits, to the woman who diligently seeks. It’s a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God." (Lamentations 3:18-26, The Message)