Brokenness

Everywhere, and I mean everywhere I look, my friends are going through hard times. It seems as though devastation and anxiety is moving like a wave and covering vast numbers of people. I am seeing a lot of injustice, a lot of needless pain, a lot of dishonesty, a lot of hurt, a lot of fatigue, a huge lack of empathy and a strikingly large group of people from all walks of life in various parts of the world, joining together with one voice and saying, "Deliver us!"
And everyone of the individuals I've spoken with recently and am thinking about who I've heard are in trouble, are Christ followers.
Why is this? Why is it that if God is good, He allows us to go through all of this? Why is it that if He says to ask for bread, we feel that all we're handed are stones?
One word: Brokenness.
James 1:2-4 says, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
I believe that brokenness is part of God's plan for us. That we must find ourselves in a state of humbled brokenness in order to be re-built by God, so that we will not lack anything.
The suffering of my friends tells me that I am completely surrounded by people of enormous faith, people who are being pressed like grapes so they can be poured out like wine. I was reading Oswald Chambers this morning and he was talking about how the calling of God is not about personal sanctification, but about becoming broken bread and poured out wine. He writes:
"God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed. I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God is using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you, the wine would have been remarkably bitter."
If you are feeling pressed on all sides, consider yourself ripened! You are viewed in the eyes of God as mature and ready to blossom into the next stage of your spiritual journey with Him. This is the moment when saying, 'Here am I my Lord, send me" really matters. This is the time when we can sing and honestly mean, "In the chaos and confusion I know You're sovereign still. In the moment of my weakness You give me grace to do Your will. When you call I won't delay, this my song through all my days."
I know you're tired. Rest in Him. I know you're angry. Vent with Him. I know you're confused. Talk to Him. I know you're lonely. Walk with Him.
I know you're broken. Praise God for it.

Colossians 1:24 "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church."