Born of a Broken Man

I sat down to study for my organic chemistry final today. It all looked like nonsense. Structures and values and reactions and definitions were swimming in front of my face in a two dimensional slurry.

I thought, This stuff is hard...

Then I remembered how smart I am. How capable I am of doing almost anything I set my mind to. I enjoyed a short ego trip, thinking about my scholarships and academic achievements and my aspirations to become a doctor. And not just any doctor, a good doctor. One who saves lives no one else can save. Like a really, really smart superhero.

And, of course, I thought of how hard medical school is. I looked back at my chemistry book, still looking like it was written in the script of an ancient civilization. If my first semester of organic chemistry is this hard, how hard is medical school going to be? I broke down, and it sounded something like repetitive mumbling:

I am broken. I am broken. I am broken. I am broken. I am not good enough. I am broken. I am a shipwreck. I am broken.

I've been hard on myself this semester. When I'm lazy and watch movies instead of studying, when I spend too much time with my girlfriend, when I try to have a social life, when I get distracted by stupid things like doing nothing and procrastination, I get this feeling like I'm not living up to my own standard. Which is a little funny, really, because I never once took into consideration the fact that I am broken!

You don't expect a broken tool to create much of anything. Why do I try to squeeze so much perfection out of myself? Why can't I understand that I am broken? I will have lazy days. I will make mistakes (BIG MISTAKES!). I will fail tests. I will choose my girlfriend over my biology textbook (not sure if I'm even able to call that one a mistake yet...). I will try and try and try and try, and I will still not be good enough to meet the standard I set for myself.

Today I accepted the fact that I am broken. I accepted the fact that I really can't change my laziness, my distractions, my poor study habits. And acceptance, I found, is peace.

I'm not trying to excuse my imperfect behavior. I'm not trying to give up and walk away. If that was the end of the story, I would not have peace right now. But, thankfully, the story does not end there. In fact, the story hasn't even begun.

Accepting our failure is the first page of our new story with God. He works through our lives to make our actions perfect in a world where our intentions are not. If you don't believe me, watch my last post. He's more convincing than me. We are all shipwrecked people.

Before walking into my last final of the semester, I was talking to God. And an analogy arose in my mind. I looked at my guitar sitting across the room, and I realized that even if it had four strings instead of six, I could still make beautiful music on it. I could still make music so beautiful that listeners might not be able to tell that two of the strings were broken.

God can pick us up and make very convincing things out of us. All we need to do is surrender our brokenness to him and admit that we are broken, we are broken, we are broken.

Paul writes in his letter to the Romans possibly the most encouraging lines in all of scripture:

"For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different."

Praise God there will be no B's on my transcript this semester! I serve a God that loves me more than I can even imagine.