Pressed, but not crushed...

"Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable."
~ G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Chesterton pens the above line in a chapter labelled "The Ethics of Elfland" in his superior little book Orthodoxy. (Project Gutenberg has the entire book on-line for free, see above link. You can even download it to your Kindle.)

I thought of Paul describing all of the punishments he had endured for the sake of Christ, how he was pressed, but not crushed, persecuted, but not abandoned. And then the line from Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him" came to mind. So I have been pondering what it means to allow God to break me, while knowing He won't discard me.

I go back to Chesterton's thought: God has made us imperishable, yet breakable. Why? He has built us with frailty in us (need for food, sleep, etc.). Why? After all, in Him there is no frailty, no shadow of turning, no going back on His word.

The Psalmist understood that we were built with frailty in us when he said,

"My heart was hot within me;
While I was musing, the fire burned.
Then I spoke with my tongue:

'LORD, make me to know my end,
And what is the measure of my days,
That I may know how frail I am'."
~ Psalm 39:3-4

God is so different from us, yet He not only knows that we exist, He knows us! I am overwhelmed with this realisation... That God would know us, care for us, draw us in to the most intimate fellowship with Him under the shadow of His wings. It is too much, He is too much!

That is my thought for today, God is too much. He is far more than 'enough'. He is beyond the scope of our greatest imaginings. When we remember how great God is, how good He is in spite of circumstances, how kind and patient He is, we find that we can be pressed, but we are not crushed. We are breakable, but not disposable or perishable. Let us be breakable in the Father's hands, which is the safest place to be broken.

~ Johanna