As I sat here this morning, writing a sermon and praying for inspiration (or, perhaps, for divine intervention), a familiar song came over the Pandora app on my computer.  Appropriately, the song is titled, “Cry Out to Jesus” and the lyrics of the chorus repeat this message:

There is hope for the helpless
Rest for the weary
And love for the broken heart
And there is grace and forgiveness
Mercy and healing
He'll meet you wherever you are
Cry out to Jesus

Five songwriters are credited, but the best known is Mac Powell of Third Day, the band whose recording I just heard.   If you don’t know the song, I encourage you to find it, listen to it—really hear it and take it into your heart as both a resource for troubled times and a source of purpose and meaning.  When you are broken, what message do you need more than this one?  When you are strong, what message could you deliver that would be as important to the broken people you encounter?

We are human; it’s always tempting to say that we are “only human.”  Only human, as if to excuse that which we do not do by our weakness, or our powerlessness, or our fallibility.  “Don’t expect too much of us; after all, we’re only human!”  We forget that it is the God of Creation the God who is love, the God who reached down to us in loving redemption, who made us to be human, God who defined what it means to be “only human.”  What if we were to say, instead, “Watch out, for there is no limit to what I can do because I am human?”

Cry out to Jesus; that’s the message of the beautiful song from Third Day.  Cry out in your brokenness.  Cry out for hope, for rest, for love and grace and forgiveness and mercy and healing; cry out for all of these, and more.  But remember that we are broken both when we are weak and when we are strong.  Our brokenness in weakness reflects our need to receive all of these gifts.  Our brokenness in strength reflects our need to give; others are weak and in pain, driven down by the burdens of life and, perhaps, without hope.  When you see it, you will know it.  Cry out to Jesus, “Lord, give me strength, that I may help your broken child.”  Then, trust me, you will know the true gift—the powerful gift--of being, “only human.”