"and Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."

- from Herman Melville's Moby Dick

I've always loved that quote. It's a great summation of what God is up to in this world, and with us. If we see ourselves rightly, we begin to look to God for mercy as the only way out. While we are made in His image and of infinite value and worth, we are indeed "cracked about the head".... and I'd add our emotions and our souls as well. It's why we use the word "broken" a lot at City Church. Fragmented. Cracked. We are not exactly as we are supposed to be. I was speaking with a group of pastors recently and they have adopted in their church the phrase "Normalizing Brokenness" in their strategic plan. I love this phrase, and as we look at our world and our relationships it should be pretty obvious. But wouldn't you know it? Part of the matrix of the fragmentation contains an amazing ability to deny, and the only way to healing is by owning that brokenness.

Here's the way historic Christianity understands the human condition. It never says we are all as bad as we can be. That's a distortion you may have grown up with in your church. No, by God's grace we accomplish and create and love and help others well. And in the same day we can squander our time and bite somebody's head off for not doing what we think they should be doing, or exaggerate our accomplishments or live secret lives of self soothing in ways that dehumanize us. A nicer way to say it might be "We are not all Ivan the Terrible, but it's not for lack of talent." Tim Keller coined that phrase many years ago and I think it gets to the nuance of a biblical understanding of human beings.

So we are in need of mending. The good news we herald each week at City Church is that God has done and is doing something about our need for mending. With the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that mending process has begun and we are all at different stages and we will find more holes even as God mends others. But God is committed to the mending process. We need only look to the cross to remind ourselves of just how committed he is to the process. I say we give ourselves to be a church that not only normalizes brokenness, but normalizes mendedness as we give ourselves to Him.