Broken

"My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise." Psalm 51:17

Or, as it says in the Message so meaningfully: "Going through the motions doesn’t please you, a flawless performance is nothing to you.  I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered.
Heart-shattered lives ready for love don’t for a moment escape God’s notice."

So: "When Mordecai learned what had been done, he ripped his clothes to shreds and put on sackcloth and ashes. Then he went out in the streets of the city crying out in loud and bitter cries. He came only as far as the King’s Gate, for no one dressed in sackcloth was allowed to enter the King’s Gate. As the king’s order was posted in every province, there was loud lament among the Jews—fasting, weeping, wailing. And most of them stretched out on sackcloth and ashes." (Esther 4:1 - 3)

Devastated in the face of impending death. Perhaps it might be easier to face one's own inevitable death: but the thought of the terror and barbaric cruelty inflicted on those we love strikes us down.

We become broken.

And none of us want to feel like that: it's unpleasant, to say the least. Overwhelmed, destroyed, traumatized. We become reduced to chaos, disorder, completely helpless.

Yet it is when we have no strength left, that we cannot take any pride in the least of our abilities, that God is able to take and use us. He desires the sacrifice of ourselves, the complete emptying of our spirits because he knows that then HIS spirit is able to fill us, overwhelm us, empower us in ways that would not be possible if we had some of our own strength left.