"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Psalm 34:18
Many people have been asking me for a long time to write on the topic of heartbreak, and to preach on it. Well, you’ll have to wait for another day to hear anything like this from the pulpit… but let me share a few thoughts I’ve had on the subject recently.
One night in September, I cried over a steak dinner…that’s right you heard me.
I’ve encountered heartbreak on many levels across the years, but not at the depth that my recent experience has afforded me. It induced a guttural pain…so deep I wondered at times if I might not actually survive it. I have found myself once again, even now, tempted to make myself comfortable in the seat of the cynic and build myself yet another impenetrable fortress around the chair. And here I was 2 weeks in… the first time I could bring myself to cook, because of the many nights we had cooked together. To be honest, he was most of the reason I did. I loved cooking with and for him when he would visit or vice versa. However, this particular night I wandered aimlessly through the grocery store aisles like I was lost. Then after cooking a simple meal I sat down, thanked God for the food, asked that He would bless it…and promptly burst into tears before I could even take a bite.
See this had been previously been a time of communion, a time of relationship and intimacy…and in this moment I felt the empty chair beside me on a visceral level. Confronted with this pain, I found myself asking the Lord “perhaps this is what you feel over the absence of your people …when someone you love no longer lives in your presence or comes to your table.”
The Bible tells us that God is close to the brokenhearted and the afflicted soul…and I’ve often ruminated on those words. It remains my conviction that it is one of the reasons why barren women and widows feature so heavily in its narrative. Our God shows a particular affinity for those whose infirmity is the ache and void in their heart, rather than a disease in their flesh. Don’t get me wrong, when we think of the ministry of Jesus, we often think of the amazing signs and wonders he did in the physical realm, the radical transformations… lepers with skin like babies, lame men leaping and those who were born blind now living in wide eyed wonder. It may be easy to forget that at the epicentre of Jesus' mission on earth was the condition of people’s souls. That is why He never ministered to someone’s body without speaking to their inner man…the need for forgiveness, mercy, redemption and love. He cast His gaze upon you all the more, if those around you had turned away. He kept the main thing, the main thing. His mission was to restore the broken relationship with our Heavenly Father...so it seems fitting that He chose to reveal His imperative by ministering to the abandoned and rejected...those who were cut off from communion in some way.
Heartbreak was at the core of the ministry of Jesus. He shared parables about lost sheep, lost sons and lost coins….because it was a picture of the heart of God and a picture of our condition. There is an almighty ache in His heart for each one that should be present at the table. There had been a time where we enjoyed communion, relationship and intimacy with Him…in fact it was the reality we were created for…and why our heart will always find itself longing if not reconciled to it. In the fall of humanity…yes we lost Him, but let us not forget He lost US. Our soul longs, because He does.
Not long before He would go to the cross, Jesus looked upon the city of Jerusalem from far off…and it brought Him to tears, for He knew that many would reject Him. People thought the Messiah would come to deliver them from the oppression of the Roman Empire, rather than the slavery to sin and the kingdom of darkness which had separated them from the deep love they were created from and for. They did not realise who had come for them and why… God in the flesh was standing right before their eyes with an invitation back to the table, and they completely missed it!
When His friend Lazarus died and his sisters were distraught…though Jesus knew what He would do, that this death was not final, this would not end in tears….He still joined them in their mourning. I find this powerfully significant. Jesus truly did enter into the fullness of our humanity, the depths of our loss…even though He knew it to be momentary. And who could forget those desperate words at calvary “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”. Though He knew this was not how things would end, though He saw the hope to come and the joy set before Him...He, for a moment spoke out of the momentary heartbreak of separation…the agony of feeling abandoned. And I often find myself grateful that He did. It has certainly helped me extend myself some grace when I’ve screamed questions at heaven, when I myself have felt cut off from its light. The truth is that the 3 days in the grave that followed were a brutal reality indeed… but not the final one. And I think that’s the thing to cling to in heartbreak. In those days in the grave, when it looks like hope is now a corpse and and our future is a tomb…it’s in that very place which God does His greatest redemptive work.
We were indeed created for forever…for eternity…and that is why our hearts break when something which is supposed to be as enduring as love becomes temporary in its expression. In heartbreak, we do indeed experience the brokenness of the fall - those created for intimacy and communion now living within the dumpster fire of our collective broken choices. But in heartbreak we also experience something of the depth of the Father’s love …who would offer His son up to walk into that very fire... to win back the object of His affections and bring them back to His table.
And heartbreak, whatever that looks like, is to me one of the only places to truly encounter the enduring hope of His promise….that all this is momentary. That for those of us who accept His invitation …yes, we follow the way of the cross but the one who went before us ensured this won’t end in tears or death. Mourning only lasts the night.
I often think about Peter and the rest of the lads when they thought Jesus was gone forever and they returned to fishing. I imagine it went something like my steak dinner did. I doubt they could have stepped back into that boat without thinking of Him…thrown out a net without remembering them dangerously full, felt the wind and the waves without remembering the one who calmed them. Getting back in the boat amidst heartbreak is painful, but all the more is our delight when we find that He is alive and waiting on the shoreline with a feast as always.
When scripture says The Lord is “close” to the broken hearted …perhaps it is because in our pain we are close to His own heart…and we experience something of the depth of His love and mercy that we couldn’t otherwise. I am always grateful for a revelation of Him no matter the cost…because you can’t possibly put a price on it. And as I remember once again that I once walked away from the table, and He still set a place for me ...I know my story doesn't end in tears.
I recently heard someone say “It's hard...there’s no real ministry for heartbreak”. Well, I believe there is…it’s called the gospel. A heartbroken Father seeking to redeem His Beloved from a pain that He never desired for them to endure. In Isaiah 61, God's heart and Christ's purpose is so beautifully laid out…that He comes to bind up the brokenhearted, that we will receive beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise rather than the spirit of despair. This miracle of redemption does indeed take place on a canvas of broken and captive hearts...just as it did upon a broken and beaten body. How beautiful that the promise we can hold to is that now nothing can separate us …not even death….no more empty chair where love should sit.