WEEK FOUR - DAY THREE - WHERE DO BROKEN HEARTS GO?

Broken hearts!   When we feel that our hearts have been split in two, life seems like it just can't go on.  Broken hearts can be caused by loss of love, loss of life or by the loss of a future we thought was secure...everything can change in a split second and our hearts can just feel so completely shattered.  Jeremiah was telling the people of Judah that their hearts were about to be broken - they were going to experience all of those losses at the same time - their families would be split apart, some taken into captivity, some killed and their homeland desecrated.  Their futures were going to be anything but what they had thought they would be.  Jeremiah is already broken-hearted because he knows, by the word of God speaking to Him, that all these things will take place without the peoples' repentance and he can't get them to pay attention to him.  He tells them to put on sackcloth and mourn for what they are about to lose, mourn with "a lamentation most bitter.  For suddenly the destroyer will come upon us."

I often say, "it's a good thing we don't know what's coming" because we would never be able to enjoy the present for dread of what we knew was coming in the future.  Because, no matter how much we would like to deny it, our lives here on earth all hold trials and hard times that we must make our way through.  Jeremiah had the sometimes unfortunate gift of prophecy, of knowing what was just around the corner for his country and his fellow Judeans.  And he told them to mourn.  

When our hearts are broken over one of life's tragedies, it is most appropriate for us to mourn as well.  We mourn and we grieve, and as believers in the God of the broken-hearted, we cry out to God for the comfort that only He can provide to His children.  Or that's what we should do.  So often we try to, as I said above, make our way through stoically, on our own.  The people of Judah didn't turn to God and mourn - they turned to every other source of comfort or assurance they could think of:  idols, political alliances with godless nations, or, what is often my go-to, ignoring the issue and hoping it will go away.  

BUT GOD offers us so much more.  Jesus assured us that we would have troubles here on earth, but He followed that problematic assurance with another that is so powerfully positive, "But take heart, I have overcome the world."  Only our Heavenly Father can make a promise like that.   Only our Heavenly Father can heal our broken hearts and start the process of recovery, and even, though we don't like to think of this when we're in the depths of grief, grow us through the process.  I have learned that hard times WILL come, to everyone, believers and non-believers alike.  But I have resolved that I will refuse to go through a hard time and waste that period of time when God is so ready to grow me in ways that I could not experience in any other way.  Don't waste it, you're going to go through it one way or another, so don't waste it, let God use it to it's absolute maximum value - that's the way I have found to endure the pain of broken heartedness.  

This process is the refining and cleansing that we covered in today's lesson.  God uses these hard times to show us the dregs that we have been allowing to accumulate in our heart.  To use that time when our hearts are broken wide open to get rid of the sludge and buildup clogging our spiritual blood vessels and to make us people of deeper character, wiser and more discerning in our diet of what we are allowing to come into us and into our very souls.  His goal is that we will come out of our dark valleys with more faith, a deeper trust and a more complete understanding of His immeasurable love for us.

So when you are broken hearted, mourn, and mourn well.  Grieve and cry and ask God to hear you - He has promised that you know,  Psalm 34:18 "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves those crushed in spirit."  HE saves us...He is waiting to hear us cry out to Him with our broken hearts.  Psalm 50:15 "Then call on Me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give Me glory."  This is what He wants us to do - this is where the broken hearted go.  This is where we are healed.