The Broken List

There are always aspects of me that I don't like, things I'm always striving to improve upon.  If I had a task list of life-objectives, areas of my own self that I could find fault with, it would extend beyond any vision of the horizon before me.  I am never satisfied.

I feel like, if I could take my life and hold it at arms length, an intimate distance but a distance still, I would be uncomfortable with what I was looking at.  I would be consumed with all the divots of failure, chasms of bad decisions, canyons of perpetual disobedience that left me wandering in valleys of confusion and hopelessness.  I would see something broken.

In Sunday School, my students are reading through the book of John.  Our method is to read straight through a book or a chapter, dissect it as we go along, and derive truth out of what is in front of us.  We are determined to know John better than any other class in our church and with knowing John comes knowing Jesus.  I have stressed that as Christians, we should know as much about Jesus as we can learn.  After all, if we don't know Jesus, then we're missing Christianity entirely.  Jesus, if nothing else, is a brilliant historical figure!  He was not quiet or shy, defensive or obnoxious, insecure or proud.  He made fantastic statements like, "Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days."  He called out hypocrites, called people "vipers" in public settings when He saw them propagating false teachings.  He turned over tables and took a whip to people dishonoring the temple.  He even disowned his own family members when they insinuated He was unstable.  He talked to people who others passed by and ignored, rejected, despised.  Throughout the biographies of Jesus (we call them the Gospels), we see a person who loves the down-trodden, the underdog, the broken.

And that's the best part, really.  The reality is that Jesus is so much more than just an historical figure, stuck in the passages of time gone by, teaching us from a comfortable distance.  He's actually even closer than the intimate distance of an arms-length away.  And He still has that soft-spot for the broken.  In fact, He said only the broken need a healer.

So when I'm making my list, that daunting list of all those things I need to improve on, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I have the option, the luxury of turning all of those things over to Him.  Then, and only then, will I experience true satisfaction, not in myself, but in Him.