What Breaks Your Heart Every Day?

Photo by Francisco Gonzalez on Unsplash

What breaks your heart every day? What unthinkable human misery fuels a passion in you to spend your last ounce of energy to make a change?

I saw a haunting photo this week of the mother of a 16-year old kneeling next to a York City police vehicle, wailing over the loss of her son to senseless gun violence. I talked to a young lady who recounted how she watched as the young man died on a sidewalk.

Does your heart break over the senseless deaths of kids? Over the fact that kids have to watch other kids die in their communities? Over the abuse of children? At the sight of homeless people sleeping in the snow? At the thought of hungry people without clean water in the world? Over another story of suicide, drug overdose, or a mass shooting?

If you pay attention to the vast sum of human suffering in the world, it surely must break your heart.

The question each of us must ponder every day is this: What am I doing about the issue that is breaking my heart?

What if your life is God’s gift to people who are suffering? 

Good Friday is a day we should allow our hearts to be broken again. 

“If you pay attention to the vast sum of human suffering in the world, it surely must break your heart.”

“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27)

Mary, the mother of Jesus, must have been traumatized as she stood at the foot of the cross. Above her hangs her son, battered, tortured, bleeding, thirsting in agony. 

This moment had been prophesied over thirty years ago by an old man named Simeon and recorded in Luke 2. 

“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

For years, Mary had lived with the promising hope of bearing the Savior of her people, but also the threat of the piercing sword.

I wonder how many times Mary questioned herself: “Is this it? Is this experience the piercing sword Simeon predicted?” 

The brief life of Jesus afforded Mary no shortage of opportunities to ask that question. 

Mary had to flee to Egypt as King Herod hunted her baby to destroy the threat. 

She lost the boy Jesus and panicked only to find him in the Temple teaching the elders.

Mary had to endure questions about the sanity of Jesus from within her own family.

She endured mockery toward her Son within her own community.

Mary heard the rumors of the religious leader’s schemes to arrest Jesus.

“Good Friday must have pierced Mary’s soul. ”

For the full length of the 33 years of her Son’s life, she watched as He made her proud, but also as the world scorned her child. Nothing pains a mother more than watching the world be cruel to her children.

How often Mary must have asked, “Is this what Simeon predicted would pierce my soul?”

Nothing could have prepared Mary for the sword that would pierce Mary’s soul on Holy Week.

Mary had to watch at Pilate’s Hall as the crowd inexplicably chose the murderer Barabbas over her Son.

She was surely there following Jesus, adorned with a crown of thorns, as he limped down the Via Dolorosa dragging the cross all the way to Golgotha’s Hill.

Mary watched as Roman soldiers pinned her Son’s body to a cross with spikes and mocked Him with a sign hailing him “King of the Jews.”

“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother...and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby.”

Mary watched as Jesus writhed and agonized on the cross, struggling to breathe as the life drained from His body. No feeling is more agonizing than when a mother cannot alleviate the pain of her child.

The final words Jesus spoke to Mary must have pierced her soul. “Woman, here is your son,” he said pointing her to John. “Here is your mother,“ Jesus said, pointing John to Mary.

Jesus resigned that He would no longer be present to care for his mother. At that moment, Mary must have grasped that her boy would no longer frequent her home or embrace her with a hug.

She must have been moved by the tenderness of Jesus as he was thinking of for her long-term care in this moment of excruciating agony. Mary must have felt the agonizing loss that this would be the last moment she would sense this tender, loving care she had known for years. Such intimate experience Mary had known for all those years to have lived with Everlasting Love.

Good Friday must have pierced Mary’s soul but it broke Jesus’s heart

He was despised and rejected by the people He came to save. His friends had all abandoned Him. Only John had returned to the scene of His torture.

There beneath him stood the mother who had loved and nurtured Him. His heart must have broken at the thought of Mary living out her days lonely and struggling to survive. 

He makes a final plea to his friend John, “Here is your mother.”

His heart breaks for His mother, but Jesus willingly hangs on the cross because His heart breaks for the Father as well. 

“For God so loved the world He gave us His only Son.” Jesus knows His mission is to show the world the full depth of the Father’s love. He will not call down the angels because every ounce of His energy must be spent convincing the world of Love. 

I wonder if Jesus woke up every morning to the heartbreak of knowing that there were people who did not know how much His Father loved them. This heartbreak must have fueled Jesus every day to find one more poor soul to whom He could show the surprising goodness of God’s love.

As He hung bleeding and dying on the cross, Jesus must have been devastated that the world had fully and finally rejected His Father’s love. The rejection of sheer grace must have broken His heart.

Before we move too quickly to the glory of Sunday, we should pause in the heartbreak of Good Friday. The world rejected and killed the arms-stretched-wide Everlasting Love of God on the cross.

“Before we move too quickly to the glory of Sunday, we should pause in the heartbreak of Good Friday. The world rejected and killed the arms-stretched-wide Everlasting Love of God on the cross.”

What did Jesus do with his heartbreak? He gave all of His life and love to humanity. 

Yet in those final dying breaths, He gave us all one final gift. As He hung dying, His only concern was the welfare of His mother. He gave John to Mary to care for her to her dying day. He gave Mary to John to tenderly care for the disciple He loved. 

Old bloodlines no longer matter, only one righteous bloodline remains. New family bonds are formed at the final, dying wish of Jesus. 

On Good Friday, when His heart was fully and finally broken, with His last ounce of energy, after He had given us everything God had to give, He gave us one parting gift to continue His mission of love: He gave us to each other.

What will you do about that issue that breaks your heart every day? A prayer to God that He would solve the world’s problem is a start, but not enough, for He has already initiated a plan of loving action.

In love, He gave the life of His Son to the world. And as He breathed His last dying breaths, in love, He gave us to each other.

Your life is God’s gift to suffering people.

John 20:21 echoes through the ages: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 

What is God’s plan for the issue that breaks your heart every day? On Good Friday, let us remember that Jesus not only gave us His life, but He gave us to each other.