I heard some very strange noises outside my window. It was as if someone was violently breaking the earth, shaking the foundation that holds our little apartment.

Naturally, I rushed to the window to see. I live on the third floor, so death through crushed rubble is a very possible reality if something were to happen to our building.

Luckily, nothing was happening to the building. They were just fixing the road. Now this was no patchwork job, they literally broke up the tarmac on the road. All the tarmac was heaped together in the middle of the road, with a bulldozer carrying away the broken tarmac.

You see, our road has been full of potholes for quite some time. Potholes so big that they looked like craters. The local government has continually tried to fix these potholes. The fixes worked, but only for a time. The fixes did not address the real issue, the broken drainage system under the road that allowed water to seep in and destroy the road. Eventually they realized that while it might be costly, fixing the drainage was the only solution to permanently fix the road. And the only way to get to the drainage was to break up the top layer of the road.

“Sometimes what is on top must be broken to fix what is underneath”

Our Christian walk can be like that. From how things appear in the natural, it looks like everything is breaking. A job is lost, a child is ill, loved ones walk away. Difficult things happen and life as we know it changes. But what if, just what if we allowed all these difficult things to stop us, and slow us down, so that God can break through our ordinary lives and draw us closer to him?

Now God does not send suffering our way. He loves us and wants nothing but the best for us. That said, sometimes he allows suffering to come our way. But even then, he stays with us, and remains our comfort and hope.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me”

Psalms 23:4

God is looking to restore us from our brokenness. Like that tarmac road, if we allow God to have a look at what’s underneath, the real people that we are when no one is looking, he will restore us. He will heal our brokenness. He will rebuild us from the inside out. He will hear us when we cry and heal our land. We can be the hope and the light that the world needs in these trying times. But God needs to start with us.

“If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will heal their land”

2 Chronicles 7:14

I pray that the Lord starts with me.

May the brokenness in me and around me bring me to my knees in humility. And may our father in heaven hear my humble prayer, restore us and heal our land. Will you join me in prayer today?