For the Hopeless, the Soulless, the Bitter, and the Broken

If I had been born at a different time or into a different family, I could have seen myself falling under the spell of our culture’s happiness worship. The belief that happiness is a commodity that can be obtained through our effort. We only have to be true to ourselves and our feelings to obtain it. Follow your feelings, let them lead you to who you are supposed to be, and at the end of that road, you will find happiness. It’s a tempting proposition.

Yet, the problem is that the cause of our unhappiness isn’t the fault of society or us being untrue to ourselves, but a deep knowing that something is wrong with us. It’s painful. Unbearable. And in our effort to escape it, we try different solutions. The world tells us the solutions are through materialism, sex, or physically changing our bodies. In those things, we will find that happiness we are missing, but at the end of the day, we only find greater darkness. 

That is the curse of this sin sin-stained world. In our search to fix ourselves and rid ourselves of the pain caused by sin, we only make things worse. We are like a cracked vase trying to fix its cracks by taking a hammer to itself. It’s in the potter’s hands that we can be remade, but we keep believing that the hammer is the answer until the pieces are so small it seems impossible to put them back together.

Maybe, that’s true. Maybe you are too far gone, and you are alone in your pain…

Or maybe that’s a lie.

Maybe others are just as broken and unfixable as you. Maybe true happiness isn’t found in your possessions, who you sleep with, or what you look like but in God’s grace alone. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus can cleanse your sin-stained heart take the broken shards, and piece the vase back together into something more beautiful than before it was smashed to smithereens. Maybe…

But you’ll never know until the day you repent and believe.

What do you have to lose?