How The Light Gets Out

Matt Adams shares how even our broken places can point to the Father.

-Transcript-

There is a great quote from Leonard Cohen song that I have always loved: “Ring the bells that can still ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” It’s a quote that reminds me of how my Savior found me, how he reached me. It was the broken places in my life, the things that needed healing, those chinks in my proverbial armor that allowed the love of the Father to take hold, to change my life for the better. I think those of us who have come to understand YHWH’s love for us understand brokenness all too well. We see ourselves in a fearful Elijah beneath his juniper tree. We readily identify with a David whose choices have led him to a place of despair. We weep with the woman with the alabaster box, understanding, as she did, the precious gift given to us in the person of our Messiah. We see the Father working in and through those situations, and so we open up those areas in our lives to His mercy and grace. That’s how the light gets in.

But once we’ve allowed the Father in through those cracks, once his grace and mercy have paved the way for healing, we all too often wall up those broken places in an attempt to hide them from the world. After all, we are saved, sanctified, and following the Father. There are no cracks here!

Yeah right…

At an education conference in Montgomery, I found myself standing in line to hear a speaker that had been recommended to me by a friend. As the crowd walked into the conference room, each participant was handed a small tube of plastic and told to find a seat. The speaker was great. Moving. Motivational. But his presentation was pretty standard, at least until the end. As he was drawing his presentation to a close, he called for the lights in the room to be extinguished. It got dark… like really dark, like Jonah swimming in fish guts dark. We were then, each of us, instructed to pull out that little tube of plastic and break it, right in the center. Cracks resounded around the room and light began to shine from the hands of every person in attendance. Then the speaker said something that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. He said, “Don’t be afraid of being broken; that’s how the light gets out.”

I had to sit with that for a while. That’s how the light gets out? Really? Suspecting that Abba had more for me in this than just a motivational speech, I thought it would be best to see what He had to say about the situation. He led me by the nose to the story of the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. In clear, almost uncomfortable language, we see Jesus tell this woman about herself, referencing specifically her laundry list of husbands and the man she is currently with. Stunned by the way she is loved beyond her mistakes, the woman leaves her water jug and runs to tell others. “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did!”
This is not a happy list for her. “Come see a man who told me about all my failed relationships, my licentious past, my sinful present.” She’s not only broadcasting the meeting at the well, she’s copping to all the things that the people of Samaria whisper about her in the streets. She’s declaring, “Come see a man who said to my face what all of Samaria whispers behind my back and who loved me in spite of all of it!” In John 4:39, the Word says, “Many Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me all I ever did.’” The same broken place that allowed the light in became a beacon when the light started shining OUT!

His strength is made perfect in weakness. Our testimony becomes the tool through which others believe. The Father has made us glowsticks for the kingdom! Our broken places become points of connection, believable realities that point to a loving Father, a perfect Savior, a set-apart Spirit that leads us daily. It’s only through the strength of His love that we can own our imperfect past, our mess of a present, our future failings and stand firm in the knowledge that he will never leave us or forsake us.
Revelation 12:11 – And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.