Holiness & Heartbreak

My mom is a hospice nurse and has been for years. The specter of death has always been there. It wasn’t a subject that we shied away from in my home. Being from where I’m from, there was a large part of me that didn’t expect to make it to 30. If I remember correctly, the life expectancy for a Black male at that time, in that zip code, was 17. At 35, if you live to the average age of death for an American, you have about 17,000 days left. 17,000 doesn’t seem that long. It’s a sobering stat. What does it mean to live well so that you die well?

Holiness

To be holy means to be set apart. It is something that is sacred. The Greek word Hagios is used in the New Testament and essentially combines the words “saint” and “holy.” This is the word used to describe Christians. 

The word holiness might carry some baggage due to the church tradition you grew up in. Growing up in the Church of the Nazarene, to be holy meant you were without sin. You didn’t drink, cuss, see R-rated movies, and on and on the list goes of outward moral behavior. Holiness was tied entirely to actions. It wasn’t about your position in Christ but about the behavior you displayed to the world.

That’s not what I’m talking about today. If you’ve trusted in Jesus then by definition you are now a saint—a holy one. A member of the saved and sent people of God, set apart to live on mission for the glory of God and the good of others. The lives we live, the moral holiness we pursue, is because we are saints, not to become one. 

Heartbreak

Heartbreak is a guaranteed part of life. If you live long enough, you will find your heart broken in some way. If we’re honest, very few of us are lucky enough to experience just one heartbreak. Whether it’s not getting into the school we wanted to, being passed up for a promotion, failed marriages and relationships, the loss of a child, or inability to have one. Heartbreak is everywhere.  

There is a special kind of heartbreak that comes in your late 30s to early 40s. You experience the death of dreams and failure, and in general life rarely ever turns out the way we expect it to. Around your early 40s, you recognize that you’re in the back half of your career and if you can take an honest eye to yourself, you realize that you’re probably not going to rise to the level that you thought you would. Or perhaps, you are a high achiever, and you’ve reached the mountaintop. It is upon getting there that you realize it’s not as fulfilling as you thought it would be. I have had countless people who are at the peak of their careers, lament to me about the sadness that comes with recognizing the emptiness of achievement. 

When the two collide

What do we do when holiness and heartbreak meet? How do we remain faithful in that place of life? How can we continue to love and serve with a broken heart?

Our faithfulness shouldn't be contingent on the achievement of all that we say we want and need. But that can be hard in prolonged seasons of waiting, not knowing when the suffering will end or when the prayer will be answered with a yes. 

The peace that surpasses all understanding might be instructive here. In Philippians 4 Paul talks about having a lot and a little and ultimately being able to do all things through Christ. That is a much harder word than we may realize. That means we have to live with heartbreak. We have to know that God is still good in the midst of it. We have to be content. 

There is joy found in contentment. 

We know heartbreak is coming. It is inevitable. But what do we do with that heartbreak? How do we live in it and be people who worship anyway? I think there is a big part of heartbreak that should be used to encourage others. If we can learn to be content when things don’t pan out, we will see that God is good. And if we can see that God is good, we can share that goodness with others. 

Identity is found in the one who holds our broken hearts and whispers to us that we are beloved. Heartbreak tempts us away from holiness and into our own means. Heartbreak tempts us to do like the Israelites in Exodus 32 when Moses was on Mount Sinai for too long and we create our own gods. They fashioned a golden calf out of jewelry because they felt like they needed to get it themselves. This revealed their lack of trust in God. 

It showed their impatience and lack of belief. God had brought them through so much. He provided for them in so many ways and yet their holiness was determined by what was happening in the moment. The difference between faith and faithfulness is time. They had faith until it felt like God was taking too long. They let their heartbreak lead them into sin. 

What would it look like if we allowed heartbreak to call us into deeper holiness and trust in God? The heartbreak is coming, it’s inevitable, but what will we do with it?