Friday, February 18, 2011

His Broken Things


Margaret Snell Nicholson was a woman who suffered from four incurable diseases. She struggled with pain more than thirty-five years, an invalid, bound to her bed. Her spirit was so transcendently triumphant through those many weary years, that she wrote some of the finest Christian poetry which has ever been written. Sadly most of her books are now out of print.

In her book Heart Held High, Martha wrote of broken people when she said,

"We are now His broken things. But remember how He has used broken things: the broken pitchers of Gideon's little army, the broken roof through which the paralyzed man was lowered to be healed, the broken alabaster box which shed its fragrance abroad and the broken body of our Savior. Let us ask Him to take our broken hearts and to press upon them further suffering to give us a poignant realization of the suffering of the world. Let us ask Him to show us the endless, hopeless river of lost souls. This will break our hearts anew; but when it happens, God can use us at last."

Of pain, she wrote: "Peter said that it is to our credit if, being aware of God, we endure pain. For it to have meaning, our suffering must bring us to God. Unless the pain leads us to that secret inner place where God is waiting to receive us, there is no good in it."

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