If you were in the drugstore parking lot today around noon in the small town where I work, you would perhaps have seen a young-at-heart middle-aged woman with her head thrown back and mouth open wide, beating a hand on the steering wheel.  You may have been inclined to stare at the spectacle or even worry if you should seek medical attention for her.  But you were missing out.

I was sitting in that car having an impromptu hallelujah party along with Nicole C. Mullen singing “Redeemer” with great feeling.  I do actually know how to sing, but you probably wouldn’t have been too impressed today.  I wasn’t worried about phrasing or breath control or even volume, and my voice cracked pretty often, but I was just so freshly struck by the truth of the lyrics I couldn’t sit in my own silence:

“The very same God that spins things in orbit
Runs to the weary, the worn and the weak …
And the same gentle hands that hold me when I’m broken
They conquered death to bring me victory”

I have been broken lately.  Maybe the truth is my brokenness is just more evident than usual.  But what a holy mystery that I can be both broken and victoriously whole in Him.  That He runs to meet our needs.  We are in a time when it’s very acceptable to worship a deity as long as the worship is wreathed in ritual and traditions to satisfy a distant, unseeable god.  Preferably one who doesn’t actually intrude into your life to make any soul-deep changes.  The more exotic the show of observance, the better.

But my God is not remote.  He gets right up in your business.  He knows the plans he has for you and I can guarantee they’re beyond your wildest dreams.  He has taken away the penalty for your sin and He has offered you the opportunity to become who He designed you to be.  Does that sound distant and impersonal to you?  Ah, but the catch is, we must let go.  And we find that so very hard to do, even though what we’re holding on to is nothing more than the brokenness that fills us with sharp edges, mistakes, and regret.

I was probably well primed to do some praising at lunch because I’d already done some worshipping in the morning when I read the daily devotional email I receive with a portion from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.  Part of today’s message dealt directly with the kind of brokenness I’m talking about:

“Jesus Christ says, in effect, Don’t rejoice in successful service, but rejoice because you are rightly related to Me. The snare in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you. You never can measure what God will do through you if you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. Keep your relationship right with Him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, He is pouring rivers of living water through you, and it is of His mercy that He does not let you know it. When once you are rightly related to God by salvation and sanctification, remember that wherever you are, you are put there by God; and by the reaction of your life on the circumstances around you, you will fulfill God’s purpose, as long as you keep in the light as God is in the light. “

See?  I don’t have to worry about not being enough, because, well, I’m not!  I can’t be!  But if I let  go and allow Him to fill me, He can do such works of grace through me I can hardly conceive of them.  I don’t have to worry about how to act or what to say in a difficult situation, and I don’t have to work to earn kudos from others because I’m so good at being good.  I can simply be, “Filled with his goodness, lost in his love.”  I’d very much like that to be my story, and my song.  Would you like to sing along with me?