The Effect of Brokenness

Today was a good day for reflecting upon some of the deeper issues of life. I stepped outside for my usual morning walk and felt the slight mist falling upon my hair and rain jacket. The October fog had once again enveloped the mountains which lay behind our house. The air was cool with my favorite NPR station reporting the temperature as sixty degrees. I always think about Seattle weather, where our daughter lives, on days like this. The story on the radio was an interview with former Senator Max Cleland who is a decorated war hero. In his new memoir he quotes a famous line from Ernest Hemingway, "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places."

I have especially been thinking about some of my friends' health issues this week. Yes, we are all older now, and I know we should expect to be bombarded with health issues at this time of our lives. A rash of new diagnoses, however, within the past few months has once again brought before me the issue of life, brokenness, and healing. One friend was diagnosed a year ago with terminal breast cancer and now struggles to walk since the disease is affecting her bones, one is dealing with just being told he is HIV positive, one is having surgery this morning for a malignant melanoma, and one is trying to hang on in her house, with her beloved cats, in spite of a very obvious problem with her memory.

How should we then live with the brokenness of our bodies and our minds? The Old Testament addresses the problem of old age most poignantly in Ecclesiastes 12, " . . . the strong men bow down; / When the grinders cease because they are few, /And those that look through the windows grow dim . . . ." God gives us an answer at the beginning of the chapter, "Remember now your Creator." Our brokenness--whether it be through the infirmities of aging, the families which have scarred us, or the trauma of war as with Max Cleland--remind us that our strength and very being come from God. Even as we are broken physically, we can become stronger in our broken places by depending upon His grace.