Broken: A Remembrance

People die, and people kill, and everyone dies a little more inside, for aren’t we all the same family? Broken people break people, and how much more can there be till our one giant heart splits right in two and all the red runs dry? And who will put us back together?

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.”*

All, all of this because we want what we have not been given. We believe the serpentine lie, that what comes from God is not enough. That what we need must come from elsewhere. And since God is all and only life, the elsewhere can only be death, the nothingness that is not him.

So we eat and are soon eaten up by this rotten discovery, and the disease spreads to the core. The disease turns us against ourselves, and our diagnosis? – Incurable, terminal cancer. Our enemy is death, but who can kill death? And who will put us back together?

All, all are fallen in battle. One death is the death of all, for aren’t we all the same family?

And the God of life weeps giant tears over this valley of bones, weeps himself dry, till tears take the form of a man and the shape of the cross. And he swallows the bitter pill, drinks death to its dregs, makes it part of him till he lies like one of us.

We did not ask for this! But this is what is given!

And the tide of red turns, and death is taken up into Life. One death is the life of all, for isn’t he now one of us? The broken God invites us into his heart and here puts us back together. And this life is gift, this life is sacrifice, this life is love, and it is the only way to live. To live in what he gives – this is the only way we can be whole.

*James 4:1-2

~lg