Aren't we all like that line up of broken down cars?

Don't we all just want others to see the best in us?

Don't we all long for someone to come along and bring us back to life?

In the depths of our souls...
aren't we all longing for a soul restorer?

It was the night of Good Friday.. ya know, the night where some churches gather to remember Jesus' death on the cross. The Friday before we celebrate that He came back to life to save us ALL...

It was Easter weekend, and I was sitting in a church we were visiting for a Good Friday service.  We were all facing the same direction, singing, and attempting to spill out words that were true about the One who created all of us.
 

And, to be honest, that evening, I was vacillating back and forth from singing to God, to having negative thoughts about those who were standing near me.

Then, out of nowhere, God, in His kindness, reminded me of a picture in the junkyard.

Suddenly, God reminded me of a photo that I took of several vehicles slumped together in the junkyard. 

They were a whole mess of broken down cars and trucks.  Some were looking too far gone.  Some looked pathetic and desperate.  Others looked not "too bad", and I could see that there was even some potential for their future. 

But, in their various conditions, its like they were all looking for a Mechanic and saying…
“Choose me, I want to be worthy of your care.”

They were ALL in the junkyard, in a broken state, for various reasons.  Some were there because of something that happened to them, while others were there because of their own choices.

I was there too.

Friend, aren’t we (sometimes) ALL attempting to live with our broken stuff while longing to receive some kind of perfect Love?

I sat there on that Good Friday evening in a new-to-me large room, suddenly aware of my crappy attitude.

And, rather than feeling condemned by God In that moment, I felt grace.

So, I received that grace and decided to go easy on myself for my negative thoughts.  I chose to cut myself some slack and receive grace for my criticisms and judgments. 
I mean, maybe, I was just trying to see how I fit into that new environment…??  Right?

But, so were they, and I needed to repent of my spiraling negative thoughts.

The reality is, we all "fit in", cause aren’t we all just a whole line-up of a mess of us?
 
And, isn’t the church a bunch of people gathering
because they recognize that they need something bigger than themselves?
 
We are a line-up of people acknowledging (atleast inwardly) that we don’t have it all together,
and we, on our own, can’t get it all together. 

We all have brokenness, and we all need a soul Mechanic.

Its a good thing that God loves the broken so much.

So, may we sing together, in the mess of our messiness,
because our mess does not change the One that we are looking to, rather our mess makes us more aware of our need for The Soul Restorer.

Isn’t that why we are gathering there together anyway...
because our brokenness is drawing us to the One who can give us hope?
A hope that I need, and a hope that the people around me needed that night.

Friend, if church isn’t your thing… If church people have hurt you or left you feeling a bit of a distaste for it all.  May I remind you that in some ways, the church is like a junkyard… a whole line of broken people looking for perfect Love. 

You are welcome there. 

So is he.  So is she.  So am I.

When you step through some church doors this Easter, and I hope that you will, I pray that
as your mind shifts from thinking about the One who loves the broken, and you wander and begin thinking about all the broken ones around you… may you remember that we are all in this junkyard together.  We are all looking for hope for our souls… We are all looking to the One who came to live in the proverbial junkyard and sacrifice His own life so that we could be restored!

May you too receive grace in that place… and may you consider extending it to the broken ones around you.