Broken and Beautiful

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."
-Psalms 51:17

"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
-Psalms 34:18

"I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat
falls to the ground and dies,
it remains only a single seed.
But if it dies, it produces many seeds."
-John 12:24

"A broken heart is an acceptable offering to God. He will never despise it. We do not know what unimagined good He can bring about through our simple offering. Christ was willing to be broken bread for the life of the world. He was poured out like wine. This means He accepted being ground like wheat and crushed like the grape. It was the hands of others who did the grinding and crushing. Our small hurts, so infinitely smaller than His, may yet be trustfully surrendered to His transforming work. The trial of faith is a thing worth much more than gold."
-Elisabeth Elliot

I remember reading a story about a butterfly that was struggling to escape its cocoon. An onlooker had pity on the poor butterfly who was trying so hard, and cut the cocoon open to release it. The only problem was, after it was out of the cocoon the butterfly couldn't fly. The effort it required for the butterfly to free itself from its cocoon would have made its wings strong enough to fly. There was no strength without the struggle - and without strength there was no flying.

In theory it makes sense that trials are given for strengthening, and for His work to be performed in our lives. In practice it's often a lot harder to see this. We pray to be made more like Him, we ask Him to work in us, and then we still taken by surprise when His working comes in the form of pain and struggles. There has been so many times when I cried out to Him to free me of a trial, and His answer was a quiet "You asked me to work in you and now you are asking me to stop." I have been guilty of this over and over again, and after His quiet convicting my response can only be "Yes Lord, work Your perfect will in me. Let these struggles transform me closer to Your perfect and beautiful image."

"O to be like Thee! O to be like Thee,
Blessed Redeemer, pure as Thou art;
Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness;
Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart."
-Thomas O. Chisholm

Sharing in His sorrows can only work to draw us closer to Him, and to imprint a clearer reflection of Him in our lives. What a small part of His trials we share, yet it is through them that we are transformed into His image! Brokenness does bring beauty.