Broken, yet whole
Hi.
It’s that time of the year again.
It’s time for Alabaster Box 2019.
Women gathering together to learn and be encouraged by the frank, open life stories shared by our guest speakers. Listening to them eliminates the feeling that we’re all alone in our challenges even if their own stories are not exactly ours. We are free to laugh and to cry.
For some of us, these life stories are the highlight of the meeting while for others, the deep, intimate worship alongside other women is what they come for because they are ushered deeper into the arms of the One who loves them unconditionally and in His arms, they find succour and healing.
We are all broken.
We are broken because we are born broken – full of sin and unable to please God; with a natural inclination to be selfish and to do whatever our bodies and minds demand, no matter how wrong the desires are.
We are broken because we have grown up in a broken world with broken tutors and guides who could only give what they had and share what they knew.
We are broken because we have gone through experiences that have broken us and even almost destroyed us.
There ar several questions that come to mind:
“Can we live a fully functional life in a broken state?”
“Can a broken person be put back to a whole state?”
“Can a broken person be put back to a whole state without scars?”
“Can one be broken, yet whole?”
As we prepare towards Alabaster Box 2019 which is coming up on June 8th and has as its theme ‘Broken, yet whole’, let’s discuss it so we can look into our individual lives, assess our brokenness and/or wholeness and take it from there.
A sixteen year old, Destiny Arinze, drew this picture.
I marvelled that a teenage could already see the brokenness in us and how we try to hide it by wearing masks. On the surface, we act like all is perfectly fine yet we are broken and hurting on the inside.
It’s just like how we have perfected the art of make up such that every blemish on our face is totally covered up by foundation and all the other bits and bobs. There are some people who wouldn’t recognize the true us if they bumped into us without the layers of makeup. Yet it’s all just a mask. I’m not knocking heavy makeup, if that’s what you like. I am just using it as an analogy to explain how we hide behind masks so that we convince everybody that all is well and even try to convince ourselves….until we get alone with ourselves (and with God who sees behind our masks).
The brokenness could be the basic brokenness of a sinful nature ; it could be because rather than trust and obey God when He said we should stay in the middle of the table, we chose to stay as close to the edge of the table as possible (to see how far we can go without actually disobeying Him) and we fell off the table; it could be that we have been through situations or have been mishandled by others and that left us broken.
No matter what caused it It’s time to peel off the masks and deal with the brokenness. It’s time to be whole.
This is a major goal for Alabaster Box 2019. If you’ve decided to join us but haven’t registered online, please do so now at www.eventleaf.com/alabasterbox2019.