24He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. I Peter 2:24-25

My wife’s phone is broken. It doesn’t hold a charge. In other places around the world my first response may have been, “Let’s repair it.” But here, I must confess, I just thought, “Oh we should get a new one.” That’s what we do with broken things: we set them aside and get a new one.

We have a fear I believe in our consumer culture of admitting we are broken. Problem, most of us don’t value broken things. If its broken we believe it has lost its value. So we throw it out and get another. And that I fear is what we are doing to people as well.

And for that matter we are really not sure about “the healing of our souls.”

An admission of brokenness is a an admission that we might not to be useful. Its an admission of need. Its an admission of what has been done to us, of what we have done, and even what we just couldn’t seem to fix on our own.

We couldn’t fix our anxiety, our pain, our narcissism, our doubt, our jealousy, our envy, our hate, our addiction, our pride, our selfishness, our guilt, our shame, our fear, our drivenness, our laziness, our anger, or our lack of direction and passion for life.

Yet, following Jesus is not a self-improvement venture. Following Jesus is about living in the care and governance of the Lord who suffered for our healing. By His grace we can now die to sin and live to righteousness.

Broken; you are of immense value to God.

The healing; it starts with an admission and a divinely motivated move toward Him.

The prayer: “Heal my soul Lord Jesus; be the Shepherd of my soul.”