What do a glow stick and a precipitously steep embankment of boulders have in common?
My children used to love glow sticks—and I remember with fondness an occasion when we were watching fireworks light up the summer sky. Each of the kids had a glow stick, and the older ones quickly snapped theirs, delighted with the resulting luminous glow. My three-year-old, however, waved her unlighted stick around with glee, not seeming to notice that hers had no light. As her nine-year-old brother tried to take it from her to activate it, she ferociously hung on to her stick, refusing to let go. Finally, her bigger, stronger brother managed to wrest the glow stick away.
He quickly snapped it and handed it back to his little sister, who beamed. As he did, he told her, “I had to break it so you could get the light.”
How like that toddler are we? How often God must look at our lives and think, You are clinging so tenaciously to your current condition—but I have to break you to show you why I created you. You have to experience that “break” so you can fulfill the purpose of your creation. (To read more, click the button below.)
But through our very mortal understanding we are happy waving our “unbroken” glow stick around in the air, because we don’t understand that we have been created to “glow.” And in our limited perspective, we tend to ferociously resist any break.
Sometimes, for some divine purpose, we have to be “broken.” We have to get sick or injured. We have to endure tremendous betrayal. We have to go through a divorce. We have to lose a job. We have to bury a spouse, our parents, our best friend, or our child—and in those moments of desperation, perhaps God is breaking us. But if we are in tune, we will find that when the breaking is over, we will more clearly see the reason for which we were created. We will more clearly see Him.
My husband and I recently had our “glow sticks” broken. Five weeks to the day after we were married, we were at the top of a steep embankment overlooking the Spanish Fork River when my husband lost his footing and in an instant catapulted head-first down the boulders shown here. (To appreciate the scale, check out my feet at the top of the picture.) I sat helplessly at the top and watched the love of my life instinctively curl into a fetal position and literally bounce from boulder to boulder, slamming into each one with radical force and coming to a stop just before he would have gone into the river.
The fact that he suffered only abrasions, a sprain, and some deep bruises can be due only to the fact that the Lord held Noel in the hollow of His hand, rescuing him to perform an important and powerful work of which we currently have a mere glimpse. With each passing day, each of us realizes more and more what a miracle was wrought in both our lives and what protective power the Lord exerts.
But with that realization also comes the awareness that a loving Heavenly Father broke the “glow sticks” of our faith, our awe, our humility, our reliance on Him, our determination to learn and do His will. We were broken—Noel more than I, certainly—so we could glow. So we could be healed, put back together in an entirely new way. So we could go forward with greater resolve to fulfill whatever He has in store for us.
