The Stronger Break

When German orthopedic surgeon Julius Wolff published his landmark findings in 1892, he described something that seems almost impossible: bone that breaks and heals often becomes denser — stronger — at the very site of the fracture. We now call this Wolff's Law. The body responds to a break by flooding the area with osteoblasts, microscopic bone-building cells that lay down new tissue in a temporary structure called a callus. Over weeks and months, that callus hardens and remodels, and the repaired section can end up with greater bone density than the surrounding tissue. The place that was shattered becomes the strongest part of the whole.

It is a picture of what the Lord does with broken lives.

The prophet Isaiah wrote of the One who would bind up the brokenhearted — and binding up is not merely patching. God does not simply restore us to what we were before the wound. He works through the healing, laying down something new in the very place where we fractured, until what once was our most tender vulnerability becomes the place from which we minister most powerfully to others.

The apostle Paul understood this. He wrote from prison about contentment in weakness, and his words have strengthened millions. His greatest ministry grew out of his deepest breakings.