Can I fix it?
When I know that something I’m involved with isn’t perfect, I want to do whatever I can to make it better.
Can I fix you?
Whenever someone I know has something troubling going on, I want to do whatever I can to make them better.
Is there something I can do? Something I can say? Something that will make it better? Has there been a miscommunication? Have your feelings been hurt? Do you feel like you haven’t been heard? Do you feel like you don’t matter?
I want to assure you that you do.
And I want my assurance to mean enough that you believe it.
I want to have the words that soothe, the words that reassure, the words that are able to change perspectives and attitudes.
I want my actions to always be such that they are moving things and people toward repair and reconciliation. Actions that build up and do not tear down.
Unfortunately…
Unfortunately I suck at these things.
I can’t often fix it.
I can’t often fix you.
Too often I speak out of emotions, selfishness, fears, and insecurities. Too often I live out of my own worldview of what I think is “fair” and “right” without considering how that might be different from your own version of “fair” and “right”.
I’m so limited.
And I hate it.
Sometimes my limitations are agonizing, oftentimes they are debilitating. I can’t think about anything else….because something in my life feels broken. It feels off. It feels like it’s not how it should be.
The Truth, unfortunately, sometimes feels like mere platitudes… trite, meaningless statements in effort to quickly fix the tears and holes in our lives. But I wish we’d let it sink in and change us. I wish we’d let it change our hearts, our attitudes, our perspectives…
Because there’s more than this. Than this life that we’re living. Than the things that frustrate us, than the things that don’t seem fair. There’s often a bigger picture that we’ve forgotten about it… and we’ve allowed ourselves to be consumed by only what we see. It’s the stuff that makes all of this worth it…
Because, on this side of eternity, things are going to be broken. Nothing is going to be exactly the way it was intended to be. No one is going to be exactly the way they were created to be all of the time. We’ll have glimmers of it… we have hope for it. But, it’s not going to be completely 100% fixed… not yet. We’re not going to be 100% healed…not yet.
We’re limited.
But it doesn’t mean that we have to operate out of limitations. It doesn’t mean that they have to define us. I can’t always fix things, and I can’t always fix others…but I know that my hope is found in the One who can. The only one who gives us hope and reminds us that this life isn’t how it wasn’t intended to be. This life isn’t the fulfillment of the promises given to us. That no matter how limited we are, no matter how unfair, how wrong, how broken things are around us…there’s much to hope in.
Because this life isn’t it.
I want those words to sink in.
For us to live for more than what’s right in front of our faces. To remember that while our present circumstances may be less than ideal, that we have a greater purpose. To be people that will gladly walk through anything so that He may be more glorified. That we’d remember how much it’s not about us….and we’d be willing to know the extent of what it means to be a living sacrifice.
I want to fix it.
I want to fix you.
But I can’t.
I am limited.
I know the One who can.
And I know that there must be more than this.
I have to live accordingly.