Be Broken Ministries

What is man that you should be mindful of him?

The genesis of something very different is looming just beyond the horizon.

I look out my window and see the city lights twinkling. The early morning is thick with darkness. There’s a chill in the air and a quietness so thorough that each keystroke sounds like a jackhammer’s blow.

I unfasten my watch and turn the dial back an hour and as if on cue the sky begins to glow in the distance. Midnight purple is quickly defeated by a deep aqua blue. The Sun is coming. I ask my phone for its opinion and he assures me it is Sunday.

My body argues. Fogginess of thought, clumsiness of hands, and the thought of my wife’s warm skin buried in the blankets a room away begin to charm me away like a Siren’s song. I long to go back to sleep yet I don’t. The sky is a soft pink plum.

Sunday… there was a time when that word meant something different to me. I can’t quite put my finger on it as I browse the archives of the back of my mind. Thumbing through the old dusty files, I see men in fancy clothes shaking hands and smiling at one another. I see them gather in rows with their families, all equally and perfectly composed, forming row after row, all looking in the same direction. They look forward intently, their heads periodically bobbing as they mutter words of agreement with the man up front; the small man in the nice suit with the big words.

The sky is now a full rainbow of colors, seamlessly shifting from royal purple, carnation pink, orange-gold, turquoise, and the beginning of that true, piercing blue that so faithfully commands the daylight hours.

I have no peace this morning. My intellect screams its logic, “It’s just another day like any other day!” Yet my spirit betrays me and fires back nonverbally by placing a lead weight in the bottom of my stomach. My mind is greatly frustrated by my spirit’s unwillingness to fight fairly, “how do you argue with that?” he groans.

I long for truth and fellowship yet loathe the spectacle. The clothing is less fancy now but the format seems to never change. I feel like something is inherently broken with all of it, like we’re missing the mark big time and don’t care to change because “this is what we know, and this is what works.” Well it doesn’t work and I feel like I’m crazy for noticing. I’m still trying to find my way past the outer court.

The Sun is now striking the neighborhood I overlook with direct hits on their eastern walls. The ever-turning Earth has brought into direct view a trillion-ton ball of ferociously violent flames and energy. It has been firing lasers of intense radioactive light across time and space. About 8 minutes after He takes the shot 80 million miles away, we feel the brute’s wrath just enough to make us squint and watch the delicate layer of frost on the rooftops slowly disappear.

I must draw this entry to a close now as it’s time for my lead weight and I to get ready for church.