By the grace of God, my mom just celebrated her 75th birthday. For her birthday, our neighbor gifted her with a beautiful rose bush. My husband was out in the yard working when our neighbor came with the plant and he called out to both my mom and my daughter to see it; as I was unavailable at the moment. When I walked out a little while later, my daughter pointed out that one of the branches had the most beautiful and fragrant roses on it, but it was broken! When I saw the broken branch with the beautiful roses clinging on to it, my first thought was “great! I can use those.” Had the branch been in place, I would have placed it in the yard as is, but because that branch was broken, I cut it off, trimmed the stems and brought those roses inside. I pulled a beautiful crystal bowl off the shelf and placed the roses in it with water. With the roses in the house, we can all surely appreciate their scent - left outside on the rosebush, we would have seen them only in passing.

I believe the same is true with me…with us. When we have it all together, often we rely on the strength of our own stems and branches, but when we are broken I believe it is then that God looks at us and says “great! Now I can use you.” I believe that in our most broken state, we realize just how much we need to be cared for by God. I imagine myself like the roses I am enjoying even as I type. In my brokenness, I cried out to God, He carefully pruned me, carefully selected a vessel in which He could use and then placed me there in His Divine care. There I sit, close by to Him where He can enjoy me. Left on my own, I would surely have died in my brokenness, but because of His nurturing grace and care, He did not allow it to be so.

Psalm 34:18 says that “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (ESV). What the enemy thought would be the end of us, God saw it as the perfect opportunity to gather our broken pieces and bring us closer to Him.

Right now as we collectively deal with a pandemic that is not impressed by our wealth, status or ethnicity-we are wise to realize that we are all broken. The very institutions that we have relied on are broken and like Chicken Little said, “the sky is falling.”

But…

Although we all credit Chicken Little with saying those four words - as we attach a period to the end of them - that is not all he said. Chicken Little said, “Oh Henny Penny! Haven’t you heard - The sky is falling! I’m looking for the King.”

We are a broken people and the sky is indeed falling. Like Chicken Little, we too must seek out The King.

Amen.