even with all these broken pieces

“Even with all your broken pieces

I make wholeness, not perfection

Even with all your broken pieces

I have a greater story to tell

Even with all your broken pieces

I give you living water from My well

Even will all your broken pieces

I will fill you and rush through you

Even with all your broken pieces

I send you to a broken world.”

As I began to read Jeremiah 2 a few mornings ago, I only made it a fourth of the way through the chapter. A lump lodged in my throat as I read God’s voice over His people’s sin—My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and they have made cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water—not because of any conviction over my own sin, but because of a question that struck me in the wake of these verses. 

I jotted it down beside the text and His reply was immediate, gentle, fresh water to my dry soul—

What do you do when you 

feel like the broken cistern 

that can hold no water?

You let My living water 

rush through you.

When His living water flows, it brings life and refreshment, healing and satisfaction, joy and peace. It cleanses and revives. It purifies. And it overflows—to others. 

His living water causes a broken, burnt out, weary woman to leave her water jar and carry herself as one to her people, no matter how broken they saw her or even as she saw herself—because something greater was at work in her brokenness. Something had given even it, even her, a reason to keep going, to keep pressing in, to refuse to stay broken from brokenness’ sake anymore.

This is what Israel has left behind. This is who Israel has forsaken—the One whose hands direct those waters to exactly where they need to be. The One whose devotion is like that of a groom pursuing His wife in her hurts, her struggles, her loneliness, her grief. The One who can do something about it.

When I tell my story in Hindi, I tell it simply and shorten it immensely, but one line I make a hinge is that, at one point in my journey, I was walking in darkness, asking, “God, where are you?” I often view this as a negative statement, but this is exactly what Israel had stopped asking. They stopped looking for Him in their days, because they thought that they could hold more than He could give them. 

That is exactly the lie that we will always be tempted to believe, from the garden to the grave: God’s holding out on you.

But the rebuttal to that lie is simply to remember His faithfulness. Remember what He’s already brought you through, the good things He hasn’t withheld. And trust Him to do it again. Ask Him to do it again. Go back to the well and drink deeply. He’ll heal your broken parts—but some cracks He’ll leave. So that others may know Him. 

The woman at the well left her own jar and went out in joy. But she went out with her own story. Her broken, sin-filled, shame-ridden mess of a story. He told me everything I’ve ever done! Could He be the One?

His living water made her story powerful, but it did not, by any means make it perfect. Reading Israel’s story is gut-wrenching—and yet it impacts us, because He still does great things with it. And He does the same with ours. Even with all these broken pieces.