strength in weakness

This week I have been so overwhelmed with the brokeness in my own life and the lives around me. You start looking at original design, and what everything was supposed to be like, and you realize how much of our lives and actions and ideas are based off of lies from the beginning. You realize how deep the roots are. How addictions, fears, pain... they all have such deeper beginnings than just one day deciding to fear what other people percieve you as. Evreywhere I look, there are broken families, broken hearts, broken relationships. Gender confusion, breakups, sexual addictions, abuse, and the list goes on.

and yet, when I come to the realization of our bareness and brokeness, the Lord comes, he lifts up my head, and I see the cross. And oh, it's so much more beautiful than when I first saw it. Or maybe it's just that I realize our need for it now. Our need for a savior. Maybe the problem in the first place is that we don't allow ourselves to see the reality of humanity. Completely broken and bruised. Hopeless and lost. Feeding off of poison time and time again, just to keep the reality at a great distance.

So I'm realizing the state of our humanity, and starting to feel hopeless, and the Lord gives me a dream.

*Im in a car and a man is driving me in a parking lot. It's raining and very dark and gloomy. He parks the car and gets out. I slowly get out and start walking the way he went. And all of a sudden a man is by my side, and his presence alone is peaceful and understanding. Like he understood the deepest parts of my heart without even talking. And he had his elbow out, as if inviting me to wrap my arm around his. And so I do. And I felt such strength and protection coming from him as we walked together in the rain.

I was then watching him from a distance, and he was around a family, with a little boy in front of him. The boy was bandaged all over, and had many broken bones. He had such a broken body. And the man wailed and bent over, his body bent over and weighed down by the grief of the boys broken body. I just stood and watched, and wondered if they were related. And someone told me it was his brother. And I watched as he mourned, staying close to the broken body.*

And so I woke up and got a revelation of Jesus. How he is more burdened by our brokeness than we are. It breaks his heart to see how far we have fallen from what he originally intended. And so in this dream I felt the strength of his presence as we walked together, and yet also saw how he shares in our weakness and suffering as he cried over the broken body of a little boy. He understands the depths of our pain and suffering. He's so closely aquainted with it. It's so beautiful. And he suffered it so he could rescue us. He beared our sin and brokeness and shame so we could be ressurected with him. So we could hold tightly to hope. A hope to someday be whole. A hope to be completely restored. And even now, he restores our heart, bringing us back to our original identity.

ahhhh. Lord give us a greater revelation of the cross. of your love. of your heart to bring us back to you.