Of Brokenness and Beauty

I'm just sitting at home tonight contemplating the role of brokenness is the life of the Christian. Just tonight I met yet another individual who has come through a terrible heartbreak in life on the road to faith. It seems every week I meet someone who has suffered through a bitter or bruising divorce. Usually, it seems these splits happened at a period of their lives right before Jesus came in to pick up the broken pieces and make new creations out of the old ones. You know, we have a lot of mended people in our churches today, those who went through sufferings unknown that wounded and rearranged them. There are many who are currently broken, to be sure, but most times they are harder to identify. People who have this notion that the church is a place of smiling, care-free people, who don't know the meaning of difficulty are only fooling themselves. There are no goody-too-shoes in the Church. Only people who have had their hearts broken only to be remade into a work of beauty by their Creator.