Beauty In Brokenness Quotes & Sayings

One retired pastor, who felt that he was being called to write a book about homosexuality, interviewed me. He said he wanted his book to be pastorally compassionate toward gay people while exhorting the church to remain firm in holding to a traditional, biblical sexual ethic. He said, "You have to be careful to not love people too much. Loving people changes you." Indeed, loving people does change you. Loving people who are different than you changes you. But it seems to me that such change is consistent with the call of Christ. Allowing your heart to enter the beauty and brokenness of another's life (which really isn't so different from your own), to hear hopes and dreams and disappointments, fears and hurts and joys does change you. One ought not be afraid of that. — Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter

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

I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry. — Lafcadio Hearn

True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue, and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution. Real relationships with others, with all the challenges they entail, now tend to be replaced by a type of internet communication which enables us to choose or eliminate relationships at whim, thus giving rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature. — Pope Francis

In brokenness comes beauty, divine fragility. — MercyMe

You can't jump to the top of the mountain, you have to climb. It's the tiny steps that will get you to the top. — Dee Dee M. Scott

I was particularly drawn to Berlin because of its literal, concrete division. Two halves making a whole, or two entities that were altered doubles of each other? Twins that had been separated and kept in neighbouring houses and raised according to different sets of rules as a social experiment? It was irresistible as a metaphor for division in the mind, for a split personality. — Nicholas Royle

I felt the electricity of his body behind me as he reached around me and took the card from my hand. He didn't move away, and I battled the urge to lean back into him, seeking the comfort of his strength. Would he wrap his arms around me? Make me feel safe, if only for a moment, and if only a delusion? — Karen Marie Moning

Jesus didn't have to extend His love. He didn't have to think of me when He went up on that cross. He didn't have to rewrite my story from one of beauty to one of brokenness and create a whole new brand of beauty. He simply didn't have to do it, but He did. He bought me. He bought me that day He died, and He showed His power when He overcame death and rose from the grave. He overcame my death in that moment. He overcame my fear of death in that unbelievable, beautiful moment, and the fruit of that death, that resurrection, and that stunning grace is peace. It is the hardest peace, because it is brutal. Horribly brutal and ugly, and we want to look away, but it is the greatest, greatest story that ever was. And it was, and it is. — Kara Tippetts

(speaking of insecurity)
"It's broken greater spirits than ours, and robbed the world of God knows how much beauty. I've seen it happen more times than I like to think about."
"$10,000 A Year, Easy — Kurt Vonnegut

Today, I saw an owl with broken eyes. A blind owl with eyes that look like a dark night filled with bright stars. I used to think that no one could really love a person so broken in so many places. But the broken owl has two eyes filled with a starry universe, and that's when I realised, that you can be loved for your brokenness. Not just despite it. It only takes someone who knows what a starry universe would feel like. Broken is beautiful, too. And sometimes even more beautiful. — C. JoyBell C.

Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision. Mosaic celebrates brokenness and the beauty of being brought together — Terry Tempest Williams

Through this broad street, restless ever, ebbs and flows a human tide, wave on wave a living river; wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide. — John Greenleaf Whittier

A broken soul is not the absence of beauty, but a cracked and torn soul reeks of the sweet incense it contains. — C. JoyBell C.

We are designed to dance. To use our bodies as weapons of grace, beauty and intrigue. We are designed to stretch until we master growth. To replace old dead cells and be physically renewed each moment. So challenges don't destroy us, they just should make us dance more swiftly and passionately. For when we dance we please God. Especially when we dance in brokenness. — Phindiwe Nkosi

If we really believe the gospel we proclaim, we'll be honest about our own beauty and brokenness, and the beautiful broken One will make himself known to our neighbors through the chinks in our armor - and in theirs. — Fil Anderson

Chaos,
leave me never,
keep me wild
and keep me free
so that my
brokenness will be,
the only beauty
the world will see. — Robert M. Drake

In the beauty of the world, we are to see God's existence. In the brokenness of the world, we are to see God's justice. As we do, we run back to the place where we see God's mercy: the cross. — Timothy Keller

Broken people find beauty in chaos. It's a perk, and it's landed you me so be grateful of all my brokenness. — R.J. Lewis

There's something about the flower that grows through the rocks, the pavement; through logs and stone or brick walls ... all roses are beautiful; but the rose that emerges unexpectedly through the asphalt has a beauty of soul. The flower that reaches through the brokenness of the wall has a beauty of spirit. You stop to look and not only to look but to cherish! Somewhere along its journey, it decided that it would reach for what was unseen, keep going in the direction of something that wasn't felt, it decided that it would be. That it would become. And it did. And there is something irreplaceable about that. — C. JoyBell C.

I don't think we ever find anything, do we? I mean in life. We think we find things and then it turns out those things aren't what we thought. — Carrie Jones

Brokenness is just like beauty; it's something we wear and carry, and if we let it define us, it will. But we are not our beauty or our brokenness, because souls are not made of beauty or brokenness. Souls are made of something permanent. Souls are made of truth. — Lauren Miller

To transform experience and thought into language and narrative - that is beautiful even if that beauty is in brokenness. — Alice Sebold

For the last 40 years of my life I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation. — Vita Sackville-West

I am not interested in whether you have stood with the great; I am interested in whether you have sat with the broken. — Unknown

We die unconsciously, we are born unconsciously and we live unconsciously as well — Anatoliy Obraztsov

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world ... That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us. — N. T. Wright

I see the fragmented beauty of grace in their lives despite continued struggles. Beautiful mosaics formed by broken pieces. — Cindy McCormick Martinusen

Having the choice at the end of my life has become incredibly important. It has given me a sense of peace during a time that otherwise would be dominated by fear, uncertainty and pain. — Brittany Maynard

Along with the GI Bill, which educated and housed Eisenhower's fellow veterans, the Interstate System has proved to be by far the most important economic-development strategy of the federal government. — David S. Broder

When I see brokenness, poverty and crime in inner cities, I also see the enormous potential and readiness for transformation and rebirth. We are creating an art form that comes from the heart and reflects the pain and sorrow of people's lives. It also expresses joy, beauty, and love. This process lays the foundation of building a genuine community in which people are reconnected with their families, sustained by meaningful work, nurtured by the care of each other and will together raise and educate their children. Then we witness social change in action. — Lily Yeh

Do everything yourself. — Nellie Melba

Become broken in your flesh so that your spirit may receive the true love that was always meant to be in your life. His love will heal the ugly, bitter, painful brokenness and replace it with the beauty of real love. — Mandy Fender