Glorifying God Through Brokenness

It's hard to believe that it's been five years since our last conversation.

The sky was painted with the colors of dusk. All of nature seemed to be wearing the delicate hues of Springtime on that April evening five years ago. We sat together in companionable silence as we so often did while watching the sun slowly sink behind the mountains.

His wife of over sixty years had died earlier that week. Both of our hearts had been made tender by grief, so when we finally spoke it was not about the temporal things but about the eternal. That night I asked him the question that I often asked him. It was something his mother had taught him when he was a young boy. I asked him about the true meaning and purpose of life.

His ninety one years seemed to fade and I heard a sweetness in his voice that must have been an echo of what his mother heard when she first planted this truth in his soul. His eyes were bright with the light of eternity as he said, "The chief end of man is to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever."

Papa was a farmer, a man of the earth. One of the most humble men I have every known. He knew that God used broken things. Broken clouds to give rain. Broken soil to plant grain. Broken grain to give bread. Broken bread to give strength. As we sat there that night reflecting on the meaning of life there was a sense of being grounded. That night there was the humble understanding that glorifying God is sometimes done when we bring our broken hearts to Him, simply believing that He can make sense out of what we ourselves do not understand.

Looking back I can still feel the joy we shared that night. Joy is a strange byproduct of grief that is mixed with faith. As we sat in the twilight looking beyond the horizon we both believed that what we were experiencing was simply a chapter of a bigger story being told. Peace blanketed our aching hearts as we thought about what it meant to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I didn't know then that that would be my last conversation with Papa. Forever began for him the next morning when he stepped into eternity.


I used to think that we brought glory to God by the big things we did for Him. But now I understand that we glorify Him when we bring Him our brokenness and find it redeemed.