Brokenness
I must share Ray Stedman’s excellent explanation of spiritual brokenness, which also touches on eternity. Read the short biography of Ray’s life to appreciate the authenticity of his words. He really gets it.
“Our own personal death is the hard, harsh, square peg that refuses to fit into all the round holes we plan for our future; it is the sand in our oyster that irritates us and makes our spirits protest against it. Why should we learn all these great lessons of life and, just when we have learned them we must give them all up and there is no opportunity to exercise them? Something about that makes us protest.
“If we have been brought up to believe the universal lie of our day which is being flung at us all the time through the media that we deserve to live, then this constantly approaching termination of our life reminds us that that is not so. In the eyes of the God of the universe we do not deserve to live. If we are allowed life beyond death it is a gift of God’s grace, not something we have earned ourselves. Something in us deserves to die; that is what universal death declares.
“That fact is what makes everybody essentially religious. This is why man cannot live like an animal. Even those who claim atheism, and attempt to act and live as though there were no God, give evidence from time to time that they do not really believe that. Beyond death is something someone they do not know who or what waiting for them, so they cannot be comfortable with the idea of atheism. They have to find some answer to the problems of life, and death is what forces them to do that.” Ray Stedman, November 28, 1982
