Last Sunday, we sang
“Hosanna,” a song by Brooke Ligertwood.[1]
There’s a line in it that has been running through my mind and heart this week:
break my heart for what breaks yours… How
powerful a prayer is this!
Notice it does not say, “I
know, God, your heart breaks for whatever is breaking my heart.” All kinds of things
could break my heart but not God’s. I don’t mean that God doesn’t care about
what happens to me or to you, but there are lots of things in life where I do
not get what I want or where particular hopes and plans do not work out but
God’s heart is not broken. I think of parents who reject their children because
they are LGBTQ and feel that their
hearts are broken. I imagine it is more the rejection that breaks God’s heart.
If God in Jesus tells us
that feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and prisoner are
what is important, then I think we can assume that when these persons are
neglected then God’s heart is broken. When abuse occurs, God’s heart is broken.
When we deny our kinship with any person as a child of God, God’s heart is
broken.
This has been my prayer this week: break my heart for what breaks yours… May I grow ever more into the image in which I have
been made, and remade in Christ.
Matthew 25:45-46
Then he will
answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least
of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal
punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
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