I don’t like broken.

I turn from broken.  I avoid it, ignore it, run from it.  Every single time.

I like neat.  I like clean.  I like pretty and healthy and easy and safe.

Broken scares me.  Broken makes me feel out of control and insufficient and completely and utterly vulnerable.  If I’m honest, and it really hurts to think this, let alone write it . . . I’m pretty sure the reason people sometimes turn away from me, is because I turn away from their broken.

And so, I think what blows my mind about the week of Easter, about the whole Easter season, is that Jesus went to be broken.

He knew exactly what was coming.  He knew he would be betrayed.  He knew he would be forsaken by his own.  He knew he would be accused and arrested and beaten and battered and bloodied and broken.

And y’all . . .

He went anyway.

He walked towards it, into it, right through the ugly, painful, frightening mess without ever looking back.

Jesus was broken, my friends, so you and I could be whole.

Whole in Him and wholly for Him.

He broke and the whole world broke and as he died on that cross, he broke the chains of our sin forever.

Thank you, Jesus.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter.  I hope you enjoyed family and friends and egg hunts.  I hope you ate jelly beans and chocolate bunnies.  I hope you sat in the sunshine and admired the tulips opening their petals to the light.  And I hope you felt the undeniable, unimaginable, indescribable love of our risen Savior - the only one who can take the broken . . . and make it beautiful.

He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said.

Matthew 28:6a