MENDING BROKEN HEARTS – PART 2
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones the ones who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Matthew 23:37
One of my favorite devotions is one I wrote a few years ago entitled “Mending
Broken Hearts.” One reason it’s
a favorite is because it refers to a song by the Bee Gees, “How Can You Mend a
Broken Heart.” It became a
favorite song of mine because, for one thing, I heard it about a million times.
During the summer of 1971, I painted my dad’s office building.
Early each morning, I would set up my radio and I would paint…and I
would paint…and I would paint. “How
Can You Mend a Broken Heart” was number one on the charts that summer and
during the course of a day, it got played at least once an hour, and during the
course of the summer, it slowly became part of my life and to this day, when I
hear it played, the earth stands still.
As a seventeen year old, little did I know how many times, in my walk with
Christ, my heart would be broken. I
mean, come on! What’s the all time
Guinness Book of World record for the number of times a heart can be broken?
I guess we’ve all felt that way, haven’t we?
It seems as Christians, if we really follow Christ’s lead, our hearts
are going to be broken…and broken a lot.
The next book I intend to write will be called “As I Have Loved You.”
It comes from those last words of Jesus, where he tells his disciples,
“A new commandment I give you…that you love each other as I have loved
you.” As I have reflected on those
words and tried to apply them to my life, I have discovered something somewhat
disturbing and that is if you love the way Jesus loved…if you love
unconditionally without regard to outcome…if you are selfless in this
love…well then broken hearts are inevitable.
Aren’t they?
The scripture above refers to one of Jesus’ broken heart days.
I mean what happens when the very people you love reject you?
What happens when your best friends go to sleep on you when you need them
the most? What happens when those in
your own hometown don’t believe in you? What
happens when the sisters of one of your best friends think you could have saved
their bother’s life if you had been there sooner?
What happens when one of your best friends says he doesn’t even know
you? What happens when those you came to love put you up on a cross and crucify
you?
And unfortunately, it gets worse. Jesus’
heartbreaks weren’t confined to His earthly life.
We break his heart too. I
break His heart. I break His heart
every time I ignore the opportunities to serve Him…opportunities that surround
me every single day. I break His
heart when I don’t spend time with Him, when I walk away from His love, when I
deny Him to the world by not living my life for Him…when I don’t thank
Him…when I don’t talk and share with Him.
When I really look at Jesus life and the love He calls me to, who am I to think
there shouldn’t be heartbreak.
Everyday, when I truly look at the world through His eyes, through His
love… there should be heartbreak.
If
we follow Christ, our hearts are going to be broken.
That is for sure. The real questions then becomes is all the
heartbreak worth experiencing the love of Christ in our lives?
Is loving others the way Christ loves us worth all the heartbreak?
I believe the answer is a resounding YES!
The awareness of Christ’s love in our lives brings us closer to Him.
And His presence in us is greater than any heartbreak the world can bring
to bear. “Greater is He who is in
me than he that is in the world!”
We are in the world…but we are not of the world.
The heartbreaks will come, but experiencing the love of Christ will take
us beyond the pain and enable us to be His witnesses to the world about a love
it will never understand.
“A new commandment I give you…that you love one another as I have loved
you.” Thanks be to God that the
heartbreak will be worth it.
Love in Christ to you,
Billy