S H A T T E R E D !!!

Following in the footsteps of Lee Daniel's "Precious" (2009), starring Gabourey Sidibe and Mo"Nique", Shattered" (2011), produced by Gilbert Lukalian and starring Nigerian Rita Dominic in the lead role, explores the same dark theme of mental and physical abuse of children in the hands of parents. It won two awards at the 2012 African Movie Academy Awards. Rita Dominic rendered an unforgettable performance as Kezia Njema, a Keyan girl whose life was shattered through no fault of hers but by just being simply the right child in the wrong hands, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. Gilbert Lukalia's "Shattered" is a true story of the excruciating pain of child abuse, the plight of defenseless children caught in a spider's web that they did not spin, frailty of the human psyche, mental and physical pain, nightmares, demons, a wounded spirit that may never heal, and indelible scars that will always be there. For example, your average foster child is already broken by the time she reaches the age of five. By the time she is 12, she has already experienced and endured more pain than most adults will ever experience in a lifetime. The statement by foremost abolitionist and champion of human rights, Frederick Douglass ["It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men"] recently posted on Facebook by a dear friend, Vickie Owoduni generated quite a buzz, I suppose it was due to its philosophical depth of content. But there is also an

 unspoken side to the Frederick Douglass statement. And that is, even though it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men, sometimes broken children do grow up to be broken adults and may never be repaired once broken. And that is the story of Kezia Njema. A broken life is a shattered life. It is a life that is less than wholesome and lived in fragments and pieces of mind and spirit. It is a completely fragmented life. It is like a ceramic vase or a clay pot that one drops. And once dropped, it shatters into pieces.The life of a broken child, a broken man, a broken woman is shattered into pieces and they could spend the rest of their lives trying to pick up the pieces and still would not have gotten anywhere close to where they were and of course further from where they needed to be. And my next statement will really shock you. God is neither in the business of repairing broken men nor does he fix broken lives. God is not in the repair business period! So what's the solution? Who then is a broken man? Those are the questions that I have endeavored to explore on this particular page of my Inspirational Files. To the reader, I would like to describe a broken man or a broken person might be more accurate since "brokenness" does not have a gender boundary. A broken person is one living a fragmented life rather than the wholesome life which God created him to live. And this is a matter of description rather than of definition. Simply put, such a person's life is in pieces. Brokenness is the bridge between hopelessness and misery no one wants to cross.  The most common frame of reference to a broken man is a man that is broke financially. A broke man is broken indeed but that is just one fragment of his brokenness Brokenness in the life of a man more time than often,  extends beyond the realm of his finances and into other key areas of his life, otherwise including he wouldn't be a broken man. The fragments in the life of a broken man include; social, physical, relationships, financial, emotional, and spiritual. Then you may want to ask the question, "How then does one end up broken"? Sometimes, it is through a life of sin, or a decision made outside the will of God for one's life. Sometimes, it is through no fault of one's own (Like Kezia, Precious,, and other defenseless children whose only sin was to be children." Life sometimes also could deliver a knockdown blow. The knockdown blow could hit hard, sometimes it could hit in the form of an illness (and not necessarily a terminal one), and sometimes it could hit in the form of the break up of a marriage. Sometimes, it could be in the form of a financial crisis triggered by the loss of a job or something as simple as a decline in one's financial capacity. And sometimes life could throw you a sucker punch when you are least prepared. No matter when or how it hits, it is devastating and it really hurts.  Broken lives can neither be repaired nor fixed. Sometimes if you are even able to pick up the pieces, then what do you do with them? Well, you pick up the pieces and you put them down again. Sometimes it is one fragment at a time. And perchance you are able to gather the pieces of your shattered life into a basket, they are still nothing more than mere fragments of what used to be a wholesome life. Children are not born broken nor do they break themselves. It does take an adult to shatter the life of a child. And in the case of broken children, their lives are nothing more than the fragments of the lives that could have been. Fragments of a broken life cannot be put together as the cracks are clearly evident of something that was, but no more. And if the cracks are not visible to others, they are not hidden from you and could be staring you in the face for the rest of your life. Simply put, a broken life is not a broken toy. It is not even close to being one.We spend a lifetime chasing what we lost without even stopping for a moment to think that maybe what we lost was never even for us in the first place. You lose a husband, and you chase after another husband. We lose money, we chase after money. You lose a wife, and you chase after another wife. You lose a house, you chase after another house without even pausing and thanking God that you still have a home. We pick up one fragment and try to fix it. We assume that if I just fix this everything else will be alright. By the time we get to fix that if we ever do, it still remains a broken fragment. You put that down and pick up another fragment to fix. Then what you thought you had fixed then begins to crack all over again. Let us also keep one more thing in mind it would take more than what shatters a life to make the life whole again. And this is the junction where most of us are lost. Maybe even fooled. A broken life has neither age, gender, nor status boundaries. A woman can be broken just like a man can. A rich person can have a broken life just like a poor person does. Many rich people live broken lives and their life is played out on your television every day, except this time it is not a movie, but the note in a song played in bitter enharmonic parody. Bitter what? Well, that is a musical note called the f-flat. Really, brokenness is a curse that humanity has in common. It transcends all ethnic and cultural boundaries. And it unites us at the foot of the cross of Christ. Then if God neither repairs nor fixes broken lives, then how does He take a man from his state of brokenness to the state of wholesomeness where He created him to be? And I thought you had forgotten. Well, the answer to the question is found in Jesus Christ. Jesus having the foreknowledge and divine wisdom that a broken life can neither be repaired nor fixed came asking broken men and women in Judea and Galilee if they wanted to be made whole [John 5:6; Luke 8: 50; Matthew 9: 22; 15: 28; Mark 6: 56; by the way the KJV contains the most accurate rendition closest to the original Hebrew tongue]. But listen and pay attention to the divine knowledge of human conditions displayed by Jesus as he interacts with those that are broken in one form or another. And sometimes these men and women were broken in more ways than one. He asked them if they desired to be made whole and also affirmed their state of renewal as having been "made whole." He could have asked them if they wanted to be healed but He did not phrase that question that way. So why didn't he asked them if they wanted to be healed or cured? Because He knew better than most. First, it has more to do with semantics than it is with syntax. Most modern translations of the above verses produce perfect mistranslations rather than accurate translations. Healing communicates just a fix of one fragment of a broken life but can neither restore nor renew the broken life to the wholesome state that God intended it to be. It only takes care of one fragment (the physical). I did indicate that a person can be broken in more ways than one and they often are. I also mentioned that it could take more than what shatters a life to make the life whole again, and it often does. Just imagine the people that Jesus made whole. They were all broken people that were broken in more ways than one. It started with just one issue (let's take the lepers for example). As the leprosy sets in in the lives of these men and women, it led to their isolation from their communities (socially), isolation from their loved ones (relationally), they were declared unclean by the priests (religiously), lost their source of livelihood (financially; broke indeed) and the list goes on. Will you acknowledge that you are a broken man or a broken woman living among people with broken lives? There are entire churches, communities, and even entire nations that are broken and need to be made whole. Will you go to Jesus today and ask Him to make you whole? Tell Him He is the only one that can do it. And when He makes you whole, no one can break you.  "Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new." 2 Corinthians 5: 17. And this has been a page from my Inspirational Files, I'm Richard James.