Psalm 34:18
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
I turned 46 last week, and the first 45 were a cakewalk compared to this.
I think it is safe to say that I am in the midst of the hardest season of my life. Between a global pandemic, heartbreaking racial and social unrest, and a government that seems more divided and dysfunctional than at any point in American history, I’ve found myself retreating from places that used to bring me joy. I now actively avoid once-frequently visited news websites and social media outlets as much out of self-defense and my own mental well-being as anything.
I’ve served as a college professor for the past two decades, and I can also say without question that the past 10 months have been harder on my students than anything I’ve ever seen, too. Try as we might to “pivot,” adjust to a “new normal,” and adapt to these “unprecedented times” (each a term I have grown to loathe), it has still come at a staggering cost. A microcosm of society, students are suffering. Parents have lost jobs. Prestigious internships—hotly contested and well-earned just months before—have been wiped away in mere moments. Grades have suffered.
And mental health has deteriorated.
My students are brokenhearted. They are crushed. And so is their professor.
We all have been so focused on what we need to do to keep going that many of us have lost sight of where we’ve been. It has been as difficult a year as I can recall not only because of the sterile, socially distanced, mask-covered reality that it has forced upon us as the simple pleasures and joys that it has robbed.
In my 46 years, I have dealt with my own personal share of depression and mental health concerns. Ever since I was an adolescent, I can recall days, weeks, and even entire months of time where I felt dissolved in a cloud of dissonant malaise.
But it has never been like this.
In these uncertain seasons, like many of you, I find myself turning to God’s word for encouragement, direction, and immovable truth.
During a recent study, I stumbled across a familiar passage of scripture. I’ve probably read it at least a dozen times or more in my 25+ years as a believer. But God’s word is alive. And as it so often does, on this particular day it spoke to me in a new way and all but demanded a deeper dig.
In Psalms 34:18, David—certainly no stranger to seasons of abject failure and heartbreak—penned words that pierced my soul on a random Tuesday morning.
“The Lord is near the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
I’ll be the first to admit I am no scholar of either Greek nor Hebrew. But when a verse speaks to me, I tend to go straight away to a commentary of a word study Bible I keep handy in order to gain clearer insight.
If I’m blatantly honest, on that particular day, it wasn’t the “brokenhearted” part that got me. Although I’ve experienced the sting of a broken engagement and the smart of dreams of academic and athletic conquest shattered, it wasn’t my heart that had been hurting most.
It was my spirit.
That crushed spirit. The translation of the original dakkeey ruach literally means “the beaten-out spirit.” The word picture is related to a relentless process of a hammer being swung—over and over and over again—to break raw iron ore into pieces, eventually separating metal from rock.
Considered in this light, it is a loud, messy, seemingly unending, and violent process.
And David says that’s what can happen to our spirit?
In a word: yep.
After 10 months of the relentless swing of the hammers of online instruction, financial uncertainties, strained relationships, lost opportunities, and so much more, I—like many of you—have felt the spirit ruthlessly beaten out of me.
A glance at the figurative ground of my life revealed the messy remnants of the beaten-out spirit. Shards and fragments littered the cold concrete. In my own pieces I saw nothing of value but only of brokenness.
But as I read that familiar passage, in that moment, I felt strength. I felt emboldened. For the first time in months, I felt hope.
Through David, the Lord promised: he wouldn’t leave us in pieces. He’d save us.
“…and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (emphasis added).
Suddenly I realized that in that process of being beaten out, tested, and separated, there was actually good that came. A resource, long locked away in the depths, had not only been dug out but divided for use in new and more impactful ways.
We all know that iron sharpens iron. But we also need to remember that before iron sharpens iron, someone had to beat it out of the rock.
So take courage, Champions. You may find yourself brokenhearted, beaten down, and left in pieces.
But our help is on the way. Our Lord saves us.
Toby B.
#bettereveryday