Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare Your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
A broken and contrite heart, You, God, will not despise.
Psalms 51:15-17

The words of this Amy Grant song began to play in my head as I read these verses…
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful, the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah…

I think so often we want to impress God with our performance—with what we do, say, and with our actions—that we forget that our brokenness speaks in volumes.  I don’t fault us for wanting to do this, we want to seem ‘put together’ to those around us, to ourselves, and to God.  We want to seem as if we are in control, following God’s word from “Genesis to the maps”, (as my pastor says).  But life happens. We are humans who fall and we break.  Yes, God does love us when we are doing well, when we are walking in righteousness.  But there is more to daily life than that…when we hurt, when we cry out in pain, when we are broken.

I always think of the story of the shattered pot.  Yes, the pot was a beautiful piece of art when it was whole but somewhere along the way it was knocked over, breaking into small pieces.  From the looks of it, there was no fixing it.  But God takes those pieces and mends them together; He fits each piece back where it belongs.  The difference is not that the light shines through the cracks but God’s light shines through us.  It was something to say that the potter created…a beautiful piece to begin with.  But it is another thing to say that God took something that was thought to be trash and made it beautiful again.  The care He took in repairing it is like the care He takes in repairing us.  Our broken and contrite hearts.  Our broken pieces that others may look at and want to throw away.  When we are broken, we may not want to turn to God.  Perhaps out of shame or pain; there may be many reasons.  But it is during these times when we need to turn to Him the most, when we need to allow Him to touch our broken lives, healing us in ways that will allow His light to shine through our cracks.  This gives Him glory and shows our faith in Him.  Yes, He delights in us doing good because that’s what were supposed to do, but as His Word says in Psalm 51, sometimes, a lot of times, our sacrifice is our brokenness.

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Let’s pray: ‘Better than a Hallelujah’, Lord!  Only You can make our broken into beautiful.  Only you can mend the hurt and pain.  We live in a performance-based society…we’re told that doing good all the time will get us where we need to go.  But You, Lord, open Your arms to our brokenness.  Thank You!  Please touch our hearts and remind us daily to turn to You when we are broken and battered.  Your light will shine through the cracks and display beauty.  Broken and contrite, Lord…this is our sacrifice to You.  In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.