genesis on Brokenhearted

Who knows why God allows heartbreak, but the answer must be important enough because God allows His heart to break too.

The robbing of our lives occurs when the core story of who we are—created as “very good” (Gen 1:31) and never downgraded, and “beloved” of God (1 Jn 3:2)—is taken through specific memories and twisted...

In a poignant tribute written after his son’s passing in a climbing accident, Nicholas Wolterstorff reflects: When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer he...

It is the prerogative and charm of beauty to win hearts.

Truly, it is allowed to weep. By weeping, we disperse our wrath; and tears go through the heart, even like a stream.

“God pity them both! and pity us all,  Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;  For of all sad words of tongue or pen,  The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’  Ah, well! for us all some...

When the Bible uses the term heart , it means the causal core of your personhood. The heart is your directional system. The heart is your steering wheel. Your behavior isn’t caused by the situati...

George Matheson was just entering the bewildering teenage years when doctors informed him he was going blind. Undeterred, he pressed on with his education and graduated from the University of Glasgow ...

He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself.

Sometimes we have to “step over” our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there...

Uncontrolled temper is soon dissipated on others. Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer.

And they watched Him now, And they wondered. What could Jesus mean? This bread was His body? This wine was His blood? And they didn’t yet know, But one day they would. That before He...

Dawn grew up in a family in which she felt she had a fairly happy childhood. But in her adult years she struggled greatly with emotional, psychological, and physical maladies. She never felt a sense o...

I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted, because of all the desires I have ever known, just one did I cling to for it was the essence of all desire: to hold beauty in my soul’s arms.

Only the beautiful is loved . . . we cannot help loving what is beautiful.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

What is the shape of your pain? Is your pain a gaping wound? Is it stuffed into the back corner of a closet, or is it neatly categorized and filed away with annotations that no one but you understand?...

I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.

Your sorrow itself shall be turned into joy. Not the sorrow to be taken away, and joy to be put in its place, but the very sorrow which now grieves you shall be turned into joy. God not only takes awa...

Resentment is like a poison we carry around inside us with the hope that when we get the chance we can deposit it where it will harm another who has injured us. The fact is that we carry this poison a...

To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you...

An Irish church once had a humorous yet insightful motto that gets at the heart of the pain that often accompanies our relationships: “To dwell above with those we love will certainly be glory. But to...

Love keeps no record of wrongs. We keep to-do lists so we don’t forget We check them twice We carry them in our pockets Holding on to the pain The disappointment The failure Re-viewing the wrong Poi...

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

In his poem Cocktail Party , T. S. Eliot captures a fundamental truth about human nature and the source of much hurt in the world. People’s actions are rarely driven by outright malice—intended t...

I am convinced that the scourge of our scientific and technological age is depersonalization. There is a heartbeat pulsating at the center of the universe, giving life and meaning to everything, but o...

The ultimate reason for our misery, however, is that we do not love God supremely. As Augustine so famously put it in prayer, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they fin...

The “gift of tears” written about by the desert elders and several centuries later by St. Ignatius of Loyola are not about finding meaning in our pain and suffering. They do not give answers but inste...

Give us, O Lord, steadfast hearts, which no unworthy thought can drag downward, unconquered hearts, which no tribulation can wear out, upright hearts, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside. Bestow...

For Those Who Still Hope I am Sarah  Bitter and barren   Burnt out by this promise that never came Worn out from waiting  Laughing to hide the aching  Longing for these empty arms to hold a baby B...