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Harsh
Desert of Brokenness
What
God Can Do in Your Harsh Desert of Brokenness
Author Dr. Mark Rutland
Do you feel
broken in this season?
Yesterday, still on the runway but strapped into my seat on a
flight to Dallas, happy to actually be leaving on time for once, now a novelty
in modern air travel, I heard words that sent a chill down my spine. "Hello
folks, this is your captain speaking. I'm afraid I have some bad news."
Those words
invariably introduce other words bound to disrupt the travel plans of everyone
involved. That certainly proved to be true yesterday.
We had to taxi
back to the gate, deplane, troop to another gate, await another plane and then
reload and try again.
This, as I
said, is now so common as to hardly bear my reporting on it.
In fact, I
would never have mentioned it in a blog, nor given it any more thought except
for the pilot's precise words in announcing the sad abbreviation of our flight.
He said, "I'm sorry to inform you that this plane is
broken."
Broken. I was
somewhat taken back by that terminology, though I'm sure it is common among
pilots and others in the airline industry sub-culture.
I think of
toys as being broken. Gadgets get broken. Airplanes? Really?
I had the
mental image of our massive airplane having been dropped by some petulant
child, and its wings snapped off. Broken is a very final-sounding word to me.
At any rate,
it set me to thinking about broken people, broken lives, minds and marriages.
Which in turn led me to thinking of brokenness and the difference between the
two, broken and brokenness, that is.
"Broken"
is the more obvious of the two terms. It means damaged, damaged enough that it
must be judged unusable, in need of immediate repairs.
Our pilot did not say we are pulling back to the gate for
maintenance to fix some minor issue. He said, "This plane is
broken."
When something
is broken, it needs substantial enough repairs to be seriously worked on by
those who best know how to fix it.
Professionals,
if you will. Counselors, pastors and therapists help the broken to find hope
and healing.
A further
distinction needs to be made between broken and destroyed. The chatty pilot on
yesterday's broken plane actually went on to tell us what was wrong.
It seems one
of the flaps was not responding to his commands. I am delighted that this was
discerned on the runway and not at 37,000 feet.
He went on to
tell us that this could and would, in fact, be repaired and the plane returned
to service in a matter of days. It just was not going to happen fast enough to
benefit us.
The plane will not, in the future, be forced to wear a sign
saying, "I had a broken flap which has now been repaired, fly at your
own risk."
Broken is
broken, not destroyed. Fixed is fixed. If we believe the plane is fixed, it
should never be mentioned again. If we don't believe it, well, that's a
different story.
Brokenness is
a different matter altogether. Is an emotional state of being which — far from
ending spiritual, mental and emotional health — is actually its foyer.
Brokenness
rips me loose from so much stuff I thought was so important to me.
From the
opinions of others. From my own theological prisons. From my prejudices,
judgments and, most importantly of all, self-pity, self-centeredness and all
the other hyphenated sins that have choked the life out of my spirit.
Brokenness is
not the end of my journey toward wholeness; it is the beginning.
Brokenness is
the doorway through which we pass from superficiality to depth and maturity.
The more often
you hear someone say, "This isn't really that important," the
more you can know they have experienced brokenness at some level.
The unbroken
freak out over steaks not cooked properly and broken airplanes. Those who have
trod through the harsh desert of brokenness know this, whatever this is, is
simply not that important.
Broken is not
destroyed, and brokenness is not the end. It is the beginning.
Dr.
Mark Rutland is
president of both Global Servants (globalservants.org) and the National Institute of Christian
Leadership (thenicl.com). A
renowned communicator and New York Times best-selling author, he has
more than 30 years of experience in organizational leadership, having served as
a senior pastor and a university president.
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