consider the coconut

"The truth is, my brokenness emphasizes God's holiness. When I am dishonest about my struggle it does a disservice to the witness of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life."

Truer words, were possibly never spoken.

I'm quoting my friend here. No, not my friend C.S. Lewis, who isn't really my friend at all with him being dead and me being alive and seeing that he never knew that I existed. But my real life friend who is wise and caring and funny and cute and "a catch." [Let me know if you need her number, fellas.]

I'm thinking about brokenness in general, and what it means to be broken-- a myriad of things, I'm sure. Broken in spirit, broken hearted, broken bones, brok'an-i-need-money (that was supposed to be a play on words... all's lost in print).

Generally not so good for us.

Except for when it's our pride. When our pride is broken and when we can confess that

1) we're not perfect

2) we don't really have anything figured out

3) we're awkward around boys

4) we snore when we sleep

5) we are too honest about how we feel about everything

6) we'll stop here. see #5

well, I think that's when all of the good stuff comes. Aka, the Holy Spirit being the good stuff to come in and restore us. To remind us that we get our worth from Someone Bigger than all of our wretchedness combined. And to remove the rotting flesh of pride with a nice skin graft of humility.

Pretend you are a coconut. Pre-Holy-Spirit you are a hard fuzzy brown smelly ball hanging on the top of a tree, occasionally reeking havoc when you decided to let gravity win and fall to the ground hitting all the meecy-mice and boppin' them on the head.

Post-Holy-Spirit, you've been cracked open, your hard fuzzy brown smelly shell whacked open with a large knife, and all of this delicious nourishing sweet frothy milk comes pouring out of you.

What purpose do we serve as coconuts until we've been broken and hallowed out and repurposed? We're losing our full potential as the bikini top for hula dancers or the topping for the lamb cake at Easter if we're hanging at the top of tree covered in that hard brown fuzz.

Or, as reality would have it, we're covered in pride and too afraid to let Someone Bigger come and whack us open and make us new.