Broken and Beloved by Sammy Rhodes

Author:Sammy Rhodes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salem Books
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Pride in Our Despair

The man by the pool is like Naaman because he has a desperate condition he hopes water can heal. But where Naaman’s pride was the biggest obstacle to his own healing, despair is the greatest obstacle to the man by the pool’s. Pride and despair might at first look like very different things. But in reality, they are often like two sides of the same coin. Where pride angrily says, “I deserve to be healed; it is my right!” despair wonders if healing is possible, “and if so, am I worthy of it?”

Jean Vanier shares the story of a man crushed by despair that made his way to their community, l’Arche in Chennai. His name was Sumasundra, a young man of twenty who had lived his days in a local psychiatric hospital after his mother abandoned him as a child. He was severely physically handicapped, with two deformed legs that made walking impossible. He had to drag himself through the streets. He would drag himself down to the local tea shop. His despair deepened when families would come visit his neighbors at the hospital, and he would search the room for his parents, only to be disappointed time and time again. He started dragging himself into the middle of the road, where cars had to swerve around him. A desperate cry for help, for death.

Vanier writes, “His despair came because he realized that his mother did not want him, could not accept him with his broken body. So he himself began to hate and reject his body. If people are not loved, they think it is because they are not loveable, that there is something evil and ugly in them.”5

If pride says, “I’m not really as broken as you suggest,” despair says, “I’m too broken for you to possibly love me.” Pride and despair are both avenues of self-rejection and self-protection. Pride rejects the reality of my brokenness and, therefore, protects against either of us facing it. Despair rejects myself as broken beyond hope and, therefore, protects against anyone even trying to face our brokenness with us.

“Do you want to be healed?” Jesus asks this man. This man still thinks Jesus is offering His help to get him into the pool for his healing. He has no idea that the healing has come to him—not in a pool, but in a person.

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