The Breaks

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, so far from the words of my groaning? Yet you are holy … and sovereignty belongs to you, the ruler over all the earth. All families and all nations worship before you; all who sleep in the earth and all who go down to the dust bow before you. – Psalm 22:1-3a and 27-29 (adapted, abridged) 

Life can break you. 

I don’t know whether I believe that God will never give you more than you can handle, but I know from experience that life shows no such restraints. And when life piles on, as it tends to do, sometimes we collapse; sometimes we eke through; sometimes we triumph; sometimes we bruise and bleed; sometimes we persevere; sometimes we break. 

Most often, we do all of the above, in varying degrees, depending on the day. But we don’t survive this life in the grand scheme of things. Always, death comes. 

Those are the breaks. 

So to the One Who Brings Into Existence All That Is, we bow down.  

For as long as we keep breathing through life’s breakage, we bend in prayer and humility to the One Who Holds Our Brokenness.  

And when this life sends us back to the dust, when survival is no longer within our grasp, we bend in worship and witness to the One Who Continues The Story. 

Life can break us. Thank God, there is One Who Remains Undeterred. 

Prayer
Be with me in every dawn and dusk of this life, O God, and do not abandon me when I break.