Divine Fragility

"From brokenness comes beauty
Divine fragility
Reminding me of nail scarred hands
Reaching out to me....."

These are words from a Mercy Me song called "Undone".  Did I mention that I am holding in my hot little hand 2 tickets to see them in Baltimore on Oct 2nd?  Answer to prayer!  Have been wanting to see them for awhile now.  Correction- have been NEEDING to see them.   Their music ministers to me in such a powerful way.  I am needed in Maryland this coming week and when I saw their concert date there near the end of my trip and one day before our scheduled vacation, it just seemed like God was saying- "yes- I will honor your need".   I know that there is a special blessing waiting for me at this concert.....

These words- they always arrest me when I hear them.  It never fails.  My heart always pauses. It doesn't matter how many times I hear this song.  I have recently been mulling them over and over and over. There seems to be something I need to write about them.  Yet as I sit here, I am not even sure what I want to say. The way words and songs speak to my heart remains a mystery to me.  I just know that they have a profound effect on me.  I will read something, or hear a song, or someone will say something to me in a conversation, and it is as if the heavens open up and there is a divine revelation.  It is the strangest thing.  I feel washed over in Grace.  This is the what I believe people are speaking of when they talk about an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Divine fragility.....I have learned a lot about this recently.  This has been a paradigm shifter for me.  Over the course of the past few months I have come to understand some things about myself and about us as a people-  Americans I mean.  In our society Independence above all things is prized-  the quintessential "I did it my way!"  Rugged Individualism.  Pulling oneself up by one's boot straps.  If we had a national slogan it would incorporate one, if not all, of these concepts.  They all describe what we prize in our society- sufficiency of The Self.  But these are things that God despises.  It has taken me a long time to understand this.  I am not sure I would ever have reevaluated my unswerving devotion to these concepts were it not for a friend/teacher/mentor who gently challenged my thought processes.  Because I was BIG into self sufficiency.  What he as taught me is this:  God wants us to live in total dependence upon Him.  He wants us to need His counsel.  He will orchestrate our lives in order to bring us to the place that we are so broken that we throw our hands up in despair and admit we can't do it on our own anymore.  This is when God delights in us. Because it allows Him to meet our deepest need.  Which is what life is all about.....we are all designed with a God-shaped hole.  It is when we embrace our divine fragility that He can dwell within us and occupy this space......God doesn't just want to know us or for us to know Him.  He wants ownership of us.....

I no longer think of dependency as a dirty word. I think of it as divine fragility.  From brokenness comes beauty.....Jesus was perfect in all things.  In power, in knowledge, in glory, and might.  And yet He allowed himself to be broken in order to fulfill the Father's will.  From His brokenness comes beauty.  If Jesus could submit himself to the Father's will, surely we can do no less. Yes, - we will be "undone".  But being undone by God is a vast improvement over being done over by ourselves.......Shalom!