Strong in The Broken Places

This world is everything. What we taste, see and feel provides the only sensations we've ever known. Yet for all it's joys, it's deeply flawed and beyond repair. There is nothing that we hold dear that we won't lose someday. Fortunately, this isn't the end of the story. There's something else...

The inevitability of being forced to let go of everything and everyone isn't news. It's something we all realize, but in the interests of maintaining our sanity we generally choose to ignore this cold reality. The extent to which we love anything is the depth of loss we'll suffer when it's gone.

This acknowledgement comes not from someone who's suffered any great losses but from a Father and Husband who sometimes worries about when the other shoe is going to drop on this great life I've been given. And it's not just people but also pets, jobs, homes, situations, and comforts that we stand to lose. Our senses cause us to be hopelessly addicted. In the midst of this realization, it's almost enough to inspire someone to retreat to the mountains and live a solitary life. But there aren't too many of us who could survive such a thing. We were born with a need to love and be loved. The fact that we must suffer as a result only illustrates the inherent brokenness of everything.

Fortunately, there's a paradox hidden in all of this tragedy. To the extent that we're broken by this world, a great and merciful God can use our weakness for good. There is no loss suffered by those who are called by God that doesn't bring greater good. There is no loss which doesn't hold forth the possibility of making us stronger. No matter how large that loss or the depths of pain it produces. True, the complete fulfillment of this gift must wait until eternity, but it's there and it will come to pass someday as surely as the pain that exists right now. Until then we still have a measure of comfort even among the wreckage of a world that seems laced with a fatal dose of entropy.

I guess I've been thinking about this because I've been listening to a song called, Faith Enough, off Jars of Clay's latest CD called, Who We Are Instead.

The song explores this paradox that in our weakness, He makes us strong. The chorus helps us to remember,

It's just enough to be strong
In the broken places, in the broken places.
It's just enough to be strong.
Should the world rely on faith tonight.

The lyrics for the whole song,

Faith Enough

The ice is thin enough for walkin'.
The rope is worn enough to climb.
My throat is dry enough for talkin'.
The world is crumblin' but I know why.
The world is crumblin' but I know why.
The storm is wild enough for sailing.
The bridge is weak enough to cross.
This body frail enough for fighting.
I'm home enough to know I'm lost.
Home enough to know I'm lost.

It's just enough to be strong
In the broken places, in the broken places.
It's just enough to be strong.
Should the world rely on faith tonight.

The land unfit enough for planting.
Barren enough to conceive.
Poor enough to gain the treasure.
Enough a cynic to believe.
Enough a cynic to believe.

Confused enough to know direction.
The sun eclipsed enough to shine.
Be still enough to finally tremble.
And see enough to know I'm blind.
And see enough to know I'm blind.

Should the world rely on faith tonight.

Take comfort from knowing that it's just enough to be strong in the broken places.

Review of Who We Are Instead