Sometimes you are going about your day, and some little hands drop something, and it shatters. And you might handle it with calm and ease, as you’ve handled many other broken things, but deep down you know…you know the sound has triggered memories that take your breath away. The piercing, the breaking, the shattering – still echoing.

‘It’s all good. It’s just a glass.’ It’s what you tell her as you sweep the broken pieces off the floor. But really, you are telling your own beating heart triggered into a gallop: It’s just a glass.

And you might be afraid to even ask. Why? Why is this world so broken? And why is broken even allowed to be?

Do you dare to ask? Why? Why God? Some questions don’t have a place to land. And some questions can break the very glass foundation you stand on. Because when the glass floor you are standing on starts cracking, you might start wondering, “how long?, how long till you even break through?”

Who knows, maybe if the floor is made of glass, it needs to break.

And you wonder, are we stuffing our suffering deep in the facade of what is expected and sweeping the pieces away? Because there is a way that we walk the line of what is expected and we skip the journey through the wilderness. There is so much in the wilderness. In the wrestling. In the questioning.

Truth that is hidden in plain sight.

If we just had the guts to ask, Why does the very Word that breathed out the galaxies breathe in a reality that has the potential to be…broken?

Here is the thing, if we don’t ask hard questions, we might miss out deep answers. If we don’t ask hard questions, we reduce the very Word that spoke reality into existence into a manageable being – one that cannot handle our hard questions.


If we don’t get close enough to God to bring Him all the questions, we might not get close enough to see His scars.

Maybe, just maybe, we don’t ask hard questions because we fear the God we know cannot handle them.  

And it’s right there at the beginning, the Word speaks time, space, and matter into existence. You look around and see this massive web of gravity, so the push and pull can keep these vast weights from collapsing into themselves. And your world does collapse – because somehow, in this tiny insignificant corner of this sea of burning stars, there is a protected, set-aside corner. He calls it a Garden of Delight. A protected, set apart place carrying His very image bearers.

Surely, He must have known. Because when time is something you hold on the palm of your hand, you know. He must have known from the start that they would lose their way – even though they were in a protected, perfect, place of delight.

But if Love is His name, He longs for communion. Not for creation that just lives. But for creation that breathes. And if Love has a desire, it is to be loved back. And so, the only way to give them choice, is to let them…choose. Is it true choice if they are not allowed to lose their way? Is it true choice, if He does not allow Himself to not be chosen?

She asks, if we can glue the glass back together. And I look at the pieces spread on the floor and say, ‘No, honey. There is no saving that. It’s broken.’ I see her eyes still looking for reassurance, and tell her, ‘Sometimes things break.’

And I do see it. Back at the beginning, He knew what that first breath would cost Him. He knew the only way back to that garden of delight, was to allow suffering, so the Creator Himself could make it all right again – by His suffering.

Did it break His heart back then? When He breathed His first breath to the first image bearer? That He’d have to witness the broken world moaning in suffering, because that is the only way for Him to be just and make it all right again? To allow suffering, so He could suffer? How else could He be just through and through and love through and through?

I sweep up the last few pieces of glass and wonder, did this creation cost Him suffering from the beginning? Is this how Jesus learned obedience from suffering? Did it start right there at the beginning? The very word that became flesh, allowed suffering so He could make things right by suffering.

If it feels like this world is breaking my heart, it broke His first. Just, it was sooner in the creation story than I expected. I thought it was at that first bite. Turns out it was man’s first breath that caused Him suffering.

Maybe we don’t ask hard questions because we are afraid that the God we know, cannot handle them. And to know God – and the one He sent – this, this is eternal life.

Maybe we don’t ask hard questions because we are afraid the glass floor will break. And what then? What will hold us up? But glass floors are just that, an illusion that makes us think it’s holding us up in the first place.
When all along, the hands that hold us are the real foundation. And they have been holding us since the beginning.