Pastor Ed’s Blog

Broken Fragments

If you’re like me, you like your truth to be clear, consistent, organized, logical, and systematic. You want truth “line upon line, and precept upon precept.” You want truth to come in bullet points.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t happen that way. Life is random, messy, disorganized and illogical. Our problems refuse to form a single line, so that we can deal with them one at a time. They come in bunches, each clamoring for our immediate attention. And truth doesn’t come to us neatly packaged and organized into a systematic “syllabus for living.”

Truth comes to us in broken fragments! Truth comes to us like a box of puzzle pieces…where half the pieces don’t fit!

Watchman Nee, after wriiting his book The Spiritual Man, insisted that his book should never be reprinted. Not because it was wrong, but because it was right…too right. It was too logical, orderly and systematic to be spiritual. It lent itself to mere intellectual apprehension. It left no questions unanswered, no mysteries unsolved.

In his book What Shall This Man Do?, Watchman Nee writes, “God, I have discovered, does not do things that way…If God gives us books, they will ever be broken fragments, not always clear or consistent or logical, lacking conclusions, and yet coming to us in life and ministering life to us. We cannot dissect divine facts and outline and systematize them. It is only the immature Christian who demands always to have intellectually satisfying answers.”

Perhaps that is why I like blogs; it’s perfect for broken fragments, random reflections and surprising serendipities (and annoying alliterations). It’s a place where the shortest distance between two points is a zigzag line!