Lord, break me

Sitting in staff meeting this morning, our pastor challenged us to think about the upcoming Easter celebration a little more deeply than we might. As Todd pointed out, we have the luxury of hindsight when we think about Easter. Unlike those there at the scene, we know, as Max Lucado put it, "Sunday's coming!"

The apostles and other contemporary followers of Jesus, many of whom had given up their livelihoods and everything else to follow Him, knew only that everything they had expected, everything that they had hoped for, had just come to a crashing halt. The One who was going to lead them to something much more (though they weren't really clear on just what or where it was), had just been humiliated, tortured, killed and buried. Something had apparently gone terribly, terribly wrong.

You may have heard it said that it's in our greatest brokeness that God does His mightiest work. Those followers of the Messiah were certainly broken. Their experience pretty much defines brokeness. It was in that brokeness, though, that God did His most amazing work! He took them back to the tomb, but the tomb was empty!

The passion and enthusiasm of those broken, but restored, men and women humbles me. I don't know about you, but even with the benefit of seeing the suffering and death of Christ through the lens of the resurrection, I rarely even approach the whole-hearted, sold-out, totally committed passion of those earliest followers. Is it because I haven't allowed Him to truly break me the way He desires? The way they were broken as that terrible Friday trudged into Saturday, and Saturday into another day without Him?

Lord, break me as you would choose, and fill me with the passion of your Son. Amen.