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Quotes About Brokenness

The way to have God near to you is to be humble and broken. As long as we are stubborn and hard and unbending, He will be far from us.
~ K.P. Yohannan
All of this beauty comes because we are broken. We no longer have anything to fight for because our lives have been crucified with Christ. We no longer have anything to boast in because our outer man is crushed, our strength is done away with, our reputation insignificant. It is only Christ within us that matters now. And it is only Christ within us, in all His beauty and grace, who can be seen now. His living water is free to flow out of us and bless others.
~ K.P. Yohannan
God's idea of ministry training is a broken vessel. His idea of spiritual preparation is suffering, which includes rejection.
~ Frank Viola
Los fantasmas construyen su nido en las fracturas.
~ Fred Vargas
Mai in vita mia Dimenticherò la tua presenza. Tu mi hai presa quando ero spezzata E mi hai riparata Su questa terra troppo piccola Dove potrei mai voltare il mio sguardo? Così immenso, così profondo! Non c'è più tempo. Non c'è più nulla. Distanza. C'è soltanto la realtà. Quello che è stato, è stato per sempre.
~ Frida Kahlo
The sensation—it's not sorrow, but something deeper—of being broken. Of being crushed so often, and so hatefully, that emotion becomes something you can only wish for. If only you could cry, because then you'd feel something. Instead, you feel nothing. Just . . . haze and smoke inside. Like you're already dead.
~ Brandon Sanderson
You want too much of me" he snapped at her as he reached the other side of the chasm. "I'm not some glorious knight of ancient days. I'm a broken man. Do you hear me Syl? I'm broken ." She zipped up to him and whispered "That's what they all were, silly.
~ Brandon Sanderson
The forgiveness of God is gratuitous liberation from guilt. Paradoxically, the conviction of personal sinfulness becomes the occasion of encounter with the merciful love of the redeeming God. "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting..." (Luke 15:7). In his brokenness, the repentant prodigal knew an intimacy with his father that his sinless, self-righteous brother would never know.
~ Brennan Manning
Getting honest with ourselves does not make us unacceptable to God. It does not distance us from God, but draws us to Him—as nothing else can—and opens us anew to the flow of grace. While Jesus calls each of us to a more perfect life, we cannot achieve it on our own. To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace. It is only through grace that any of us could dare to hope that we could become more like Christ.
~ Brennan Manning
To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.
~ Brennan Manning
To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace. Honesty keeps us in touch with our neediness and the truth that we are saved sinners. There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.
~ Brennan Manning
The poor man and woman of the gospel have made peace with their flawed existence. They are aware of their lack of wholeness, their brokenness, the simple fact that they don't have it all together. While they do not excuse their sin, they are humbly aware that sin is precisely what has caused them to throw themselves at the mercy of the Father. They do not pretend to be anything but what they are: sinners saved by grace.
~ Brennan Manning
The Lord is fine-tuned to the hates and loves, disappointments and delights, brokenness and togetherness, the fears, joys, and sorrows of each of us.
~ Brennan Manning
This God expects people to be perfect and to be in perpetual control of their feelings and thoughts. When broken people with this concept of God fail—as inevitably they must—they usually expect punishment. So they persevere in religious practices as they struggle to maintain a hollow image of a perfect self. The struggle itself is exhausting. The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God.
~ Brennan Manning
Humility and fraternal love are spiritual bedfellows. When we befriend our own brokenness and minister to our wounds with tenderness and compassion, the "other" is no longer an intruder but a fellow sufferer.
~ Brennan Manning
I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery.
~ Brennan Manning
The soft yellow-brown of the son's underclothes looks beautiful when seen in rich harmony with the red of the father's cloak, but the truth of the matter is that the son is dressed in rags that betray the great misery that lies behind him. In the context of a compassionate embrace, our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
~ Henri J. M. Nouwen
real care means the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into the gateway to joy.
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
The more we become sensitive to our own journey the more we realize that we are leaving and coming back every day, every hour. Our minds wander away but eventually return; our hearts leave in search of affection and return sometimes broken; our bodies get carried away in their desires then sooner or later return. It's never one dramatic life moment but a constant series of departures and returns.
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
Thus, our brokenness can become a gateway to new life.
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
We often live as if our happiness depended on having. But I don't know anyone who is really happy because of what he or she has. True joy, happiness, and inner peace come from the giving of ourselves to others. A happy life is a life for others. That truth, however, is usually discovered when we are confronted with our brokenness.
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
Christ invites us to remain in touch with the many sufferings of every day and to taste the beginning of hope and new life right there, where we live amid our hurts and pains and brokenness.
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
it is precisely in this continuous process of confession and forgiveness that we are liberated from our isolation and encounter the possibility of a new disarmed way of living. Christians are peacemakers not when they apply some special skill to reconcile people with one another but when, by the confession of their brokenness, they form a community through which God's unlimited forgiveness is revealed to the world.
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
Our brokenness is truly ours. Nobody else's. Our brokenness is as unique as our chosenness and our blessedness. The way we are broken is as much an expression of our individuality as the way we are taken and blessed.
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen