Brokenness and Grace

The Body of Christ has a thousand angry opinions, a thousand fractions and divisions and circles, all these cliques of circles, all these walls. But none of us are not broken.

And acknowledging our own brokenness is what makes high walls between people crumble. Because when you are broken—it's always your pointing finger that is broken. You can't point at anyone else anymore as the only sinner.

Brokenness breaks us from our need to be "right" and breaks us open to our need to extend the grace we have been given.

Is Christ divided?

Puritan Richard Baxter in his work The Reformed Pastor brazenly wrote:

"He that is not a son of Peace is not a son of God. All other sins destroy the Church consequentially; but Division and Separation demolish it directly …"

Division and separation demolish the Church directly. If you want a field to yield, you have to tear out the fences.

We are the women who take seriously enough the commandment of the Last Supper to love one another that we invite someone to our table from the other side of the fence. We are God's children who break bread together to break down walls.

The Christians who instead of waging attack on the implicit issues of another's faith life spend our lives openly encouraging an explicit faith in the living Christ. We are sisters who really believe the Bible, that "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Tim. 2:19), and we could be the ones who stop judging and simply make our lives about the joy-filled proclamation of knowing him and making him known.

We could be his daughters called to be Peacemakers and Rift Menders and Fence Destroyers, the ones who know that the brokenness of humility is the secret to community, and the harshness of pride is what builds walls of division.

We could be the ones who know that the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love (Galatians 5:6).

Adapted from TCW article "Breaking Down Fences" by Ann Voskamp.