Paying Attention

"A broken heart is so terrible that, according to the Word of God, Jesus Himself has to fix it."


I read that statement today in a daily email I get from Divorce Care which I read just to have one more piece of input of goodness each day.
Then I went back to read Isaiah 61, probably my most read part of scripture and wondered, how did I miss this? I have focused so much on freedom, the healing from, in my case, a 51 year old broken heart got past me somehow.
I think the focus has been on drinking or whatever to be healed from, but those are just what we do to heal a heart that has been broken for a long time which fails every time. Then I thought, in the midst of these words talking about setting prisoners and captives free are words regarding, of all things, a broken heart and grief. Mercy! Does my God regard our grief and broken heartedness as powerful and difficult to be healed from as getting out of "prison"? Apparently so. To include the healing of a broken heart in with these other things tells me it is of equal importance and I have no more ability to do it by myself than I do to free or release myself from anything else.
We tend to think our heart is broken on occasions; he left me, she rejected me, my mom has died; but I am wondering now if these are simply the things of life that occur only as events which remind us our heart is broken.
Either way, as I have before and always will, I will cling to these words of promise and pray that with each day that passes, the rip will get even smaller.