There are days when the weight of the world feels unbearable. We turn on the news or scroll our feed to see devastating floods in Texas— utter destruction and lives lost. Then it’s wars—across continents and borders that leave innocent people grieving, starving, and displaced. Other times, we hear about another mass shooting, fueled by untreated mental illness and a society that feels increasingly fractured. We hear stories of lives lost or forever changed by gang violence, human trafficking, and abuse. We look at our own communities and see children who don’t have enough to eat and adults and young folks who can’t afford the medical care they need. We see how addiction tightens its grip on people of all ages and backgrounds.
Sometimes the world weighs us down and breaks our hearts. It’s enough to crush the spirit. But into that brokenness, God speaks a promise: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18
Indeed, God is not far off and watching from a distance. God does not turn away from our grief, our heartbreak, or our exhaustion. No, God draws near. God sits with the mother holding her child, who has died, for the last time. God walks beside the person experiencing homelessness with nothing but a bag of clothes and a pocketful of fear. God is with the one silently suffering from an illness, the one who feels invisible, the one who’s given up trying to ask for help. God sees. God knows. God is near.
Yet, God is not only near, he also saves those who are crushed in spirit. That saving doesn’t always mean that the grave problems and difficulties cease. Instead, sometimes God’s saving looks like breath in your lungs for one more day. Sometimes it’s a neighbor showing up unexpectedly with a meal or a kind word. Sometimes it's a church leaning into its divine calling, reaching out in love beyond its walls.
Often, God's saving work comes to those who are crushed in spirit through ordinary people who care and seek to lift up those in need. And ultimately, even in hard things, may we remember that God saves through Christ, who bore the full weight of this world’s suffering on the cross, who knows what it is to be brokenhearted and crushed in spirit, and who rose again to offer hope that can never be destroyed.
If the state of the world grieves you or you feel crushed beneath the suffering you witness or experience, remember that your sorrow is not wasted. That heartbreak is a sign that your heart still beats in rhythm with the heart of God. It's a call to compassion, not despair. Let that heartbreak move you, not into numbness or withdrawal, but into prayer, action, advocacy, generosity, and love. Let it move you to cry out on behalf of others, to hold space for their pain, and to be part of God's saving nearness in the world. Amen