To Be Taken, Blessed & Broken - To Bear Fruit

Prayer Blog for Friday - December 18, 2009

"The Life of the Beloved" – Precious In God’s Eyes

“You are the beloved and on you my favor rests”.

Jesus heard that voice. He heard that voice when He came out of the Jordan River. We need to hear that voice, too. It is a very important voice that says, "You are my beloved son; you are my beloved daughter. I love you with an everlasting love. I have molded you together in the depths of the earth. I have knitted you in your mother's womb. I've written your name in the palm of my hand and I hold you safe in the shade of my embrace. I hold you. You belong to Me and I belong to you. You are safe where I am. Don't be afraid. Trust that you are the beloved. That is who you truly are."

We need to hear that voice. It is not a very loud voice because it is an intimate voice. It comes from a very deep place. It is soft and gentle. We need to gradually hear that voice. We need to hear that voice and to claim for ourselves that - that voice speaks the truth, our truth. It tells us who we are. That is where the spiritual life starts -- by claiming the voice that calls us the beloved.
There are four words that are used in the story of the multiplication of bread, words that are used at the Last Supper, words that are used at Emmaus and words that are used constantly when the community of faith comes together. Those words are: He took, He blessed, He broke, and He gave.

To be taken, to be blessed, to be broken and to be given is the synopsis of the life of Jesus who was taken, who was blessed by God, broken on the cross, and given to the world. It is also the summary of our life because just as Jesus, we are the beloved.

First, we are taken, or a better word would be chosen. We are chosen by God. That means we are seen by God in our preciousness, in our individuality. We are seen as precious in God's eyes.

In our world, when one is chosen it means for the others, "Too bad for us, we are not chosen." In God's mystery, being chosen doesn't mean excluding anyone. In fact, the more we know we are chosen, that we are seen in our preciousness, the more we will realize that our friends and all people are seen in their preciousness. The life of the beloved starts by trusting that we are chosen in our uniqueness, that we are unique in God's eyes, precious.

The second aspect of the quality of the life of the beloved is that we are blessed. It is so important we understand that we are blessed. The word benediction means blessing. Literally, bene means good and diction means saying. To bless someone means to say good things about them. "You are good." We need to know that good things are being said of us. We have to trust that, otherwise we cannot bless other people. So many people don't feel blessed.

It is very important that when we are in touch with our blessedness that we can then bless other people. People need our blessing; people need to know that their father, mother, brothers and sisters bless them.

Then we are broken. We are broken people. Much of our brokenness has to do with relationships. If you ask me what it is that makes us suffer, it is often because someone couldn't hold onto us or someone hurt us. Each of us can point to brokenness in our relationships with our husband, with our wife, with our father, our mother, with our children, with our friends, and with others. Wherever there is love, there is also pain. Wherever there are people who really care for us, there is also the pain of sometimes not caring for or being cared for enough. That is enormous.
What do we do with our brokenness? As the beloved of God we have to dare to embrace it, to befriend our own brokenness, not to say, "That should not be in my life. Let's just get away from it. Let's get back on track."

No. We should dare to embrace our brokenness, to befriend it and to really look at it. "Yes, I am hurting. Yes, I am wounded. Yes, it's painful."

We don't have to be afraid. We can look at our pain because in a very mysterious way our wounds are often a window on the reality of our lives. If we dare to embrace them, then we can put them under the blessing. That is the great challenge.
Often we want to solve people's problems and tell them to do this or to do that - that we will help them out and let's get over it. The main task we have is to put our brokenness and the brokenness of the people with whom we live under the blessing. If you live your brokenness under the curse, even a little brokenness can destroy your life. It is like an affirmation that you are no good and suddenly you say, "You see what has happened? I lost my job. This friend didn't speak to me. He rejected me." We can hold on to it and see it proven that we are no good. We always thought so.

The great call is to put our brokenness under the blessing, to live it as people of whom good things are being said.

If we live our life as people who are taken, blessed and broken, then we can give ourselves. We are taken, blessed and broken to be given. Mankind’s greatest human desire is to give of ourselves. Quite often we say that we want to have a lot for ourselves then we will give a little bit to others. The greatest fulfillment of our heart is in the giving, to give ourselves. It is letting go. The mystery is that as we let go for others our lives start bearing fruit. That is a great mystery.
Jesus says, "It is good for you that I die because when I die I can give you my spirit and you will bear much fruit in your life." I really believe that is the final call, to give ourselves.

When we are people who are chosen by God -- blessed, broken -- we can give ourselves to others. Our life can bear immense fruit. Those who live as the beloved, continue to bear fruit generations after they have died. When we think about certain great people in history, they still give us life. They still give us hope because their lives became fruitful, fruitful in the giving.

The story of the multiplication of bread reminds us of a little boy that others said that he was not worth anything. He had five loaves and five fishes. This little boy was received by Jesus and He took these five loaves and five fishes. He broke the bread after having blessed it, and He gave it, and in giving it multiplied and it was enough for everyone to eat.

That story says something about our lives. We are little people, but if we believe that we are chosen, that we are blessed, that we are broken, to be given, then we can trust that our life will bear fruit. It will multiply, not only in this life, but beyond it. Others will find strength by knowing that they are being given new life by those who lived as the beloved and they can become the beloved themselves.