I woke up on a Saturday morning at home. I started praying to the Lord and thanked him for everything he has given to me and for his continued faithfulness. Then not long afterwards, I began having a daydream where I felt like I was playing baseball. I was in the batter’s box and God was about to throw me a pitch. It was like being in the bottom of the ninth, ready to hit the ball out of the stadium. I kept thinking about the Yankees against the Red Sox going at it for the AL champion title game. As God released the pitch, however, instead of a baseball, I saw the word “BROKEN” coming at me. Realizing this was unexpected, I asked myself, “Why is God throwing me the word “BROKEN”? Shouldn’t it be a baseball?” Then God said to me, “Alex, this pitch is to help you see that I can make something out of the broken things of life.” I saw the word coming at me and I hit it out of the park. As I continued to think about my daydream, I felt God speaking to my heart. He was saying to me, yes, “Broken” is usually a word that means something bad or sad. But then God gave me the following acronym, turning the bad and sad of BROKEN into something good.
B. Believe
R. Resilient
O. Optimistic
K. Knowledge
E. Engage
N. Nurture
It is natural to see word(s) and understand them for their first impression, allowing them to deceive us at times. But when you put the Lord in front of you and you are dressed in the armor of God, God can take those deceptions and turn them into something that glorifies the Lord. Ephesians 2:10 (ESV) says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” God takes the broken and uses it for the goodness of his kingdom.
My “BROKEN” baseball daydream did not just come to me in an instant. God has been working on my understanding of BROKEN since September of 2023. During that time, I had just returned from a week in New York, visiting my mom, when I came back to work, and could absolutely feel that something had changed in my work environment. I felt like I was broken inside, and I couldn’t quite explain why. My environment went from positive and engaging to negative and empty. Let me tell you, those several months of a BROKEN environment were painstaking and overwhelming. But I also could feel God’s light shine through me, so I continued to hammer my way through all that was in front of me. Matthew 5:16 says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” I continued to read my Bible, to pray, to think about Scripture passages, and to stay connected to my church community through my months of BROKEN environment. And it was after the months of Brokenness that God could give me the acronym for BROKEN. I had to experience the Broken to see God’s redemption in it. And because I stayed connected to God and his church through the difficulty, he was able to take my BROKEN and turn it into something meaningful.
Yes challenges, trials, and valleys will always exist. We may feel broken, but when we spell out its letters, we can have a different approach. When God leads in our lives, he turns the BROKEN we feel into the home run we hit. He continues to throw these BROKEN “baseballs” at us because he wants to grow and mold us into people who reflect his character.
By Alex Simmons
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