I drive the speed limit.

And I don’t like opening a package of crackers in the supermarket to feed my kids.  There is something in me that needs to pay for them first.

I’m a rule follower. I think it was bred into me.  Which is why my three years of breaking all the rules were so out of character for me.  At least for my personality.

I’d begun to press against the rules that I’d been raised with and in my blindness, seeing no immediate consequences, I questioned the validity of the rules.

Don’t drink.

Don’t flirt with men who aren’t my husband.

Don’t lie.

Don’t…

Nothing horrible was happening (yet) so what was the big deal?

The rule follower in me didn’t become a rule-breaker; she became a rule-questioner.  I wasn’t breaking anything if there wasn’t anything real to break because the rule only seemed real if their was a consequence.  My Evangelical upbringing had taught me that doing things like drugs or having sex before I was married would land me somewhere between hell and a really crappy life.  Here I was married and having an adulterous affair and nothing really bad was happening.  The consequences I thought would fall like an executioner’s axe weren’t falling.

What I’d failed to realize was that I shouldn’t do those things NOT because of the consequences (because in all truth, much of our life is lived without physical consequences) but because doing what was wrong would break relationship with God, and then eventually others.

It was about relationship.  Not about the rules. Because in the right relationship a person doesn’t really need rules.

Let’s just call it the rule of Love.  Jesus called it the Greatest Commandment.

If I love God and if I’m concerned about my intimacy with Him, then the more I want to please Him.  The more my life will look like a person who is in Love with their Creator.  And the more I will live in ways that are righteous and are in line with what we consider “rules”.  I’ll need the rules less as a rigid law because I’m focused on pleasing Him (and running everything through that filter). I will begin to do those things naturally that bring me closer to Him.

The same goes with my husband.  The more I love him, the more I want to be the right kind of wife and all the rules of submission and boundaries we’ve put in place (although important) begin to fade in light of my love for him. They aren’t nearly as important as how much I want to show him how much I love him today.

Rules? All of the other rules hang like a hat on a hook of the rule of Love.

What do you think? Are you a rule follower or a rule breaker?

The two most common words uttered in churches across America…

“Let’s pray…”

And then the pastor/elder/ worship leader launches into a prayer about people you don’t know, programs you won’t attend or missionaries you don’t care about.  But you bow your head and close your eyes anyway but think about what you have to buy from Trader Joe’s this afternoon.

So maybe it feels overused or overdone, or even boring.

But that’s not the kind of prayer I”m talking about.  I’m talking about bringing each other to the cross because as Christ-followers we are His hands and His feet here on earth. And sometimes we can’t walk by ourselves and have to be taken on a stretcher.

So today, in the comments, leave a request for prayer about you or your immediate family and we will pray.

Even if you do not pray yourself, but want us to pray for you, leave a comment.

Even if you do not want us to know who you are, leave one anyway and put “Anonymous” in the name and email fields.  I will pray.  Others who read it will pray.

But if you do leave your name, I will pray for your by name.  I promise this.

So be brave, leave a comment, and then pray for the others before you who have left prayer requests.

And then sit back and watch God work.

This kind of prayer is never boring.

My seven-year-old carefully carried her treasure home in a simple paper bag, wrapped at the store with ribbon and dried sage.  She’d found a fairy, a tiny doll with white lacy wings and a halo of silver tinsel.  It was cheap, but to her it was priceless.

She played with it for a few days then set it down in the wrong place.

When she was gone one morning, her sister brought me the treasured fairy doll in two pieces.  In her three-year-old clumsiness, she’d broken off one of the hands.

I subtly hid the broken fairy before I could get to the store for super glue.

Gluing it back on I realized it didn’t sit the right way on the tiny arm.  The resin had cracked in an obvious bracelet around her wrist.  Hope would know immediately that the hand had broken off.  And before I would explain, she would understand exactly who the culprit was.

To a seven-year-old, brokenness, even in the face of repair, somehow signifies worthlessness.  Who knows if the hand won’t just fall off again because the glue isn’t strong enough?  Or the slightest touch in the right place might send it sailing to the carpet.  And plus, it just looks bad, Mama…

It just looks bad.  She’s right.

Brokenness does look bad.  And in the case of fairy hands, brokenness IS bad too.

But with the human heart considered, brokenness is better than the strong, firm hold of something that hasn’t been crushed and bruised at the feet of an Almighty God.

And this is the irony of Christianity.

What is weak is strong.

What is last is first.

What is broken is whole.

She will continue to play games with her dismembered fairy, and after a few days, that hand might find a home in the back of the junk drawer.  And Hope might wish she had a doll with a matching set of arms.  And she’s right, broken toys are no fun.

However, hearts are a different matter altogether.

At the height of our healing process, Chad said to me, “You can’t help but love a broken heart.”  We are drawn with compassion toward brokenness and humility almost without being able to stop.

And I believe God always draws close to the broken.

Broken is scary and sometimes ugly, but it is at this place that God meets us.