On our way home from town last weekend, we passed a familiar sight: a man digging through a bag of trash, someone else’s trash. And my heart broke. I’m still so affected by this, I thought, having lived in our African town for nearly eight years. My next thought followed instantaneously, Lord, please don’t ever not let my heart be broken by brokenness. It can be hard though – so hard – to face day after day.

We live in a world that’s hellbent on mending broken hearts. And why not? If the chief goal is ultimate personal pleasure and fulfillment, then suffering and brokenness are obstacles we must overcome. By all means, let’s not live to endure brokenheartedness. A broken heart is painful and uncomfortable, something in need of healing.

We are masters at curating our own comfort: selecting our ideal neighborhoods, zoning specific districts, personalizing our feeds. There’s no need to be faced with the poverty downtown, or the challenges in the next school district over. If an area becomes too unsafe, we can move. We are privileged in that way.

And yet. Unless we are willing to waltz through our days with shielded eyes, we cannot avoid the unending scenes of suffering around us. Are we willing? Can we make that inhumane choice?

In her poem “The Ponds,” Mary Oliver writes of lovely lily pads, perfect and beautiful, floating lights on dark ponds. But upon closer inspection, she sadly finds several that are “full of [their] own unstoppable decay.” She writes,

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing 
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.

I think we can all relate. Can I just cast aside the weight, and float a little?

When I look at Christ, I see a man who was willing to see the brokenness of others, and enter into it. He was willing to touch the leper, and the bleeding woman, and the dead child. But he had the power to heal it! you might be crying at me (my mind is crying at me). All I can do is witness it, and offer my meager prayers, and my insignificant funds, and my limited effort. What is that worth, in the furious face of all that is broken in this world?

May I humbly suggest that as light is irrelevant without darkness, so too is beauty outside of brokenness? In our willingness to bear witness to the suffering of others, we make space for light and beauty-and someday, healing-to enter. My meager prayer-Father, be with that man and his family; provide for them-is not nothing, but rather a small ray of light, entering into one man’s suffering.

Our willingness to bear witness to brokenness is a courageous defiance to our culture’s temptation toward pleasure and comfort at all costs. We will not turn our faces, we will not harden our hearts. We will see it, feel it, and scream with fury that this it not how it is supposed to be! This is not how it will always be! We link arms with Jesus, to walk alongside, and even touch when we can, the suffering and the brokenhearted, seeking to offer what little healing we can, seeking to speak light into another’s darkness, and spreading hope that Christ will make it all right someday soon.

We choose to be affected.

//

I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
Mary Oliver, "The Ponds"