Back to God's Heart

“Thank God my faith teaches me that listening is the beginning of empathy and, when followed by action, is a powerful prayer.” - Ashley Judd
 

When your face
appeared over my crumpled life
At first I understood
Only the poverty of what I have.
Then it’s particular light
on woods, on river, on the sea,
became my beginning in the colored world

-Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “Colours”

Can’t stop smiling; God is good, He satisfies.

Spring cleaning, broken tacks, & hope.

I was nailing tack’s into the wall to hold up a painting from Africa (yes, tack’s), and ran into a problem. The first tack bent all weird and couldn’t be used… so I grabbed an extra. The next three tacks went in without a problem. But on the fourth corner, the last tack bent the same way the first one had. It was my last tack so I was determined to make it work and somehow got the broken twisted tack into the wall.

This got me thinking.

Was the problem in the way the hammer hit the nail? What about the way the tack was loose at its base? Or maybe I should have grabbed two or three extras knowing there may be more faulty tacks? Maybe I shouldn’t have even used tacks to hang a painting in the first place! Or maybe there’s more to this lesson…

Well… what if we are the tacks. What if we could even be the faulty tacks.

Maybe our joints are loose from all our running away and running in circles. Maybe we are entirely inadequate for the job of hanging a hand painted view of the African sunrise. Maybe there are perfectly crafted frames that could showcase the painting or strong nails that could hold the painting more secure…

But God chose us. He chose the week, He chose the least of these.

And even when we break under pressure; even when we fall when the hammer hits… He picks us back up and He sets us back into His absurd and beautiful plan.

It doesn’t make sense, but He wants to take us, these flimsy tacks, and He wants us to be a part of His plan to showcase this breathtaking view.

And so He uses the tacks. Not the regal frame; it would distract from the raw and simple beauty of the painting. And not the iron nails; they might leave holes and tears in the canvas.

God uses the humble.

Then I thought back to the first broken tack that was discarded so easily, and I wasn’t  sure how that might fit into this picture of God’s plan for our lives…

But I think that first broken tack represents something in us… We can be so eager to get the painting on the wall, to get the show on the road. Our hastiness to move forward then blinds us from the need for healing in front of us, we are blinded from the small things in need of repair.

So let’s remember that we are treasured, that His strength is displayed in our weakness… That He uses the humble, the broken, the lost, and the unexpected.

And as we go out to pursue His great plan for our lives, let’s not overlook the broken set along our own paths. Let’s flip the cliché inside out and ask, “what would Jesus do?” Because Jesus will never abandon the broken, His heart is for the ones deemed irredeemable.

In all brokenness there is a longing for a love that heals. So let’s believe God’s crazy irrevocable love for our lives and strive, always, to make that love known.

“But God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish”(Psalm 9:18).