Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World

by Shelly Miller

There are two kinds of brokenness—voluntary and involuntary. Alan Nelson describes voluntary brokenness as the kind that allows God to do whatever he wants with us. Involuntary brokenness, on the other hand, comes as the uninvited guest of difficulty—divorce, job loss, death, chronic illness, the trauma of a car accident: You can choose one of three responses when involuntary brokenness comes your way. You can rebel and grow bitter. You can gradually give in under constant nagging and increased pressure. Or you can respond positively to it and mature. In essence, you can go through it, or you can grow through it. But when we go through difficult issues without developing an awareness of our inadequacies and God’s love for us, we become broken in the wrong places.3 Nelson goes on to describe people broken in the wrong places as bitter, cynical, brittle, angry, and hateful; a shell of our former selves in old age. In essence, he is describing a person void of rest, but he is also describing someone who interprets long waiting seasons wrongly.