We're All Broken

It's a blissfully sunny day here in Colorado.  As this week has progressed, I have found it a hard discipline to sit and reflect on the happenings of last week in El Salvador.  This particular struggle reminds me of a trip I took as a sophomore in college with my good friend Rebekah.  Over a long weekend, we traveled with a group of college students to the inner city of Chicago to be exposed to the grim realities of inner-city life. 

One night on the trip, Rebekah and I stayed up for some time, propped up in our sleeping bags, discussing the things we had experienced and hoping that the things that were gripping our consciences at that moment would not escape into oblivion when we returned to "normal" life.  Yet, when I was back on campus, flooded by all the demands of college life, it was hard to keep those images and needs and heart-wrenching feelings vivid.  I recall my frustration that my sense of urgency was fading.  I think this is normal, but I wish with my whole being it weren't.

I guess this is why journaling is so valuable.  Reviewing the thoughts that struck me about my recent trip will aid me in holding onto the things that impacted me most while I was there.  I pulled my journal out today and found a big topic that impressed me while in El Salvador: "We're All Broken."  These were my mother's words that she expressed during one of our team devotionals last week.

She spoke them during our debrief about the destitute community we had visited the day before. We were all batting around the ideas of poverty and riches and happiness and sadness and how all of those factors are correlated.  It's an age-old tension of thought.  How much does material and financial security contribute to happiness?  Though most people would say that material needs aren't necessary for true joy, there is still heartache and deprivation that is caused by poverty that those who are wealthy don't experience in the same way.  Yet, as is also common knowledge, some people who have extravagant material possessions are strikingly sad and full of despair. 

There is some sort of balance to be struck, but I think my mom's words were perfectly poignant: "We're all broken."  When gauging a measure of fulfillment, material possessions are truly a smaller factor than we often realize.  Of course there is sadness in poverty.  Of course there is emptiness in extreme wealth.  Yet, the bottom line is that we all live in a broken world that is constantly screaming in pain because of the unfair pendulum swing of life.  Rarely is that pendulum perfectly in the middle.  Every human in every situation feels a stinging consequence of some aspect of the tilted pendulum.  One man's sorrows are not another's, but we all face the brokenness of our human heart and the shrapnel of the world around us.

I am not at all downplaying the hardships that those in true poverty experience.  I understand that they need love, support, prayer, and help.  I am cognizant that there are people who live horrific lives that I cannot comprehend.  My point is simply that comparing sufferings perhaps ignores a more fundamental truth. On some level, we all feel the shards of a broken world tearing at our flesh.  The only relief from this pain is to turn to Christ.  He alone "heals the brokenhearted" (Psalm 147:3).  He alone can truly remedy the deep soul ache that every human in every circumstance faces.

It was hard to see deep poverty in El Salvador.  If I could, I would fix it someway, somehow.  I felt so fortunate in comparison to the people I saw in that poor community.  Yet, those people and I aren't so different.  We're all broken people in need of a compassionate Savior.  Perhaps solving worldwide poverty is impossible.  Maybe solving spiritual poverty is not.  It just takes one heart at a time turning toward Christ.  What a marvelous, comforting truth!  There is a balm for every broken heart.  Jesus Christ is His name.