Finding Christ Together

Sometimes in life, we face things before which we don’t just bend or break, but shatter. And all that we are fractures and falls upon the floor of our own worlds come to naught. Our stories that make up who we are, the contradictory puzzle pieces of our personalities, cease to unify us, but splinter us into bits. We lose the satisfaction of knowing who we really are. Being lost, truly lost, is terrifying. We grasp at our stories that reflect the brighter moments in our lives; they are brilliant, comforting, and full of hope. However, they are connected to those villainous vignettes that mirror the darkness, times when we chose deceit, betrayal, violence, and malice, or someone chose these for us. We don’t want these stories anymore, but they cling to us anyway, even as we fragment because of them. Our very efforts to deny them pull us down into an abyss of sorrows.

We may cry out for help or we may sit in the stillness of our secret sadnesses alone. Either way, we need someone to identify us, to tell us who we are, and to remind us of our value that we have meaning. We don’t just need a savior, we need the Savior; however, despite his promise, “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come for you” (John 14:18), he doesn’t seem to come. Instead, we may only receive an encouraging smile from a stranger, an unprecipitated kind word from a co-worker, or the listening ear of a friend or a family member. As appreciated as these gestures are, they are not Christ’s infinite and perfected empathy. So, we are puzzled when, in his place, he sends the broken to the broken to find wholeness again.

And there, scattered and broken, but together in our imperfect attempts to help each other, we find the Savior. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20). And there he is moving between the creases of our broken pieces bringing us all together into his wholeness. With Christ, our brokenness allows us to fit together like a puzzle; our broken pieces become the mosaic, the portrait of the Messiah’s infinite love for us. Our many seemingly separate lives become one story of how we each find him together. He came, he was always there, and he will always be there when we are there, with and for each other. Let’s find each other, and we will find him together.

Thanks to my friend Katherine and brother David for their helpful comments in grammar and content!