I read once in a book that the worst thing anyone could do to a man would be to take away something dear to his heart and then give it back to him... broken. I've thought about that statement now and then for years, considering it carefully.

It seems obvious that if something is just taken away there's always a hope that it can be returned safely. How wonderful and delightful it is when you open a trunk in the attic and discover something you thought was lost forever! But when it's a precious item, like a treasured photograph, and you find it in a box that was destroyed when your basement flooded, well, you kind of wish you had never found it again at all.

Sadly, many children are abducted and, while there is the extremely rare happy ending, many are eventually found dead. Until that happens, though, the family holds out hope that the lost one will be restored. It is not until the end that all hope is lost and the loved one's hearts are truly shattered. Sometimes, though, while that seems terrible enough it's even worse when the dear child is found years later, mentally damaged beyond repair and unreachable, angry and prideful of their warped lifestyle.

I think, in this regard, the devil blew it with Job. He simply kills Job's children. Job seems to be OK with that. Not that he wants his children to lose their lives, but he seems to be confident that he has "done right by them" in God's sight and that they are not lost eternally. How much more effective if the devil could have found a way to "corrupt" them, to turn them against God. How much more magnified the pain Job would have felt, knowing that his children were in such a state. It might have been the one thing bad enough to push him into despair.

I have a brother who I love very much. He does not believe that, of course, because I do not accept his bad lifestyle choice. Once a preacher of the true gospel, now one who has turned his back on God, abandoned his lawful wife and children, and taken up with another woman. He is "broken", unfortunately, by filling his life with this and other sins. He wrote me a letter a few days ago, ironically lashing out at me for not approving of him. There is nothing as heart wrenching as knowing he is floundering around in this sin and arrogantly reveling in it, then to have him write me and ask why I have a problem with that. It's bad enough knowing his state and his fate, unrepented, but then to have him throw it up as if you had the problem, as if you were the one to blame. It's a terrible thing to bear.

I cannot fathom how my parents overcome the grief. Somehow, though, they focus that they cannot save anyone - not even me. They can only save themselves. I cannot understand how much grief God must feel if we disappoint him, too.

However, there is a song we sing that goes "Bring Christ your broken life, so marred by sin..." and in that I have hope. While those bound up in sin often refuse to see it wrapped around them and choking their life away, yes and even snootily proclaiming the very thing that is killing them as some kind of liberating, better-than-you condition, sometimes before it's too late they grasp what is going on and free themselves. So I hold out hope, as unlikely as it seems, that my brother will mend his ways and soften his heart to God. Like the missing child, one of these days he will turn up one way or the other. And even if I never hear about it here on earth, what a delight it would be to find him unexpectedly in heaven, the ultimate attic, having finally made his life right with God. Better than any old photograph!

Randy