Blessed are the Broken

The worship service on Sunday, October 22 focusses on the teaching ministy of Jesus, particularly the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-12. Who's blessed and who's cursed? Who's excited and who's ashamed? Who wins and who loses? How do we know who is ahead in life?
Martha inherited a dining room set with some wonderful, old, hand-painted chairs from Pennsylvania. We guess they are over 150 years old. Recently one chair was broken. It was initially devastating to Martha. It was a family heirloom and she dreaded the thought of telling her mother. When she called and told her, her mother laughed and said that that same chair had been broken when she was a girl (her mom is now 83) by a pastor visiting the family. Not only that, the same pastor after breaking the chair went on to drop an expensive serving bowl. "It was broken long ago and was fixed then and can be fixed again." Martha never heard that story before. It's just a chair and it is fixable...again.
Jesus called broken people blessed, because they are fixable by his forgiving and powerful love.