Humpty Dumpty and the Middle East Mess

Smoke rises from buildings due to heavy artillery shelling in Barzeh, a district of Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network)

I watch the world going in circles over the latest Middle East crisis. Precipitated by the massacre of hundreds of innocent people. I'm thinking ... "Our world is really complicated. Impossibly complicated."

Oh, we agree that using chemical weapons is horrific. But we're having a hard time figuring out what to do about it. Even the most powerful nation on the planet. Sometimes power feels so powerless.

No matter what the response, it seems to create another series of unthinkable consequences.

Welcome to a world that seems too broken to fix. Unleash your mighty weapons and who knows what else you may unleash. Hold your fire and who knows what else you may unleash.

Get used to it. Governments paralyzed by polarized politics. Conflict over what if anything is worth fighting for. Leaders deciding based on avoiding risk. Others leaders who don't care what price has to be paid to stay in power. Some who want to die and take as many with them as possible. Tyrants who try to hold the world hostage with some of the world's most devastating weapons.

Who can possibly figure out a world where every solution creates another problem? Maybe even making things worse.

It's a Humpty Dumpty world. "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again."

No, they can't. But the King can.

Our convoluted world needs leadership beyond what any President or prime minister or United Nations can provide. We need a Messiah. Who actually can put these hopelessly broken pieces together. And make a world where, in the words of the Bible, "the wolf will live with the lamb" and "nation will not take up sword against nation" (Isaiah 11:6; 2:2).

Unfortunately, according to the never-wrong prophecies of the Bible, evil will offer its own counterfeit messiah. Whose agenda will be to unleash a worldwide tsunami of unspeakable evil and bloodshed. As close to real hell on earth as there can be.

But he won't ultimately prevail. He can't. Even Mr. Evil Incarnate ... aka, Antichrist ... will have to bow to the King of all kings. And meet His awful justice. And King Jesus will come back to show us a world that works.

But it's not just a Humpty Dumpty world that needs a Messiah. It's a Humpty Dumpty "me."

There are so many of us Humpty Dumpty people. With pieces of our past, our future, our family, ourselves that we can't put together. Broken by what our sins have done ... and what others' sins have done to us.

The choices are conflicted and confusing. The consequences are scary, no matter what we choose. And we live with the scars and regrets of the bad choices we've made. Reminded constantly of how fallible, how flawed we are.

Yes, our world is starved for a Messiah. But so am I. So are all of us humans, trying to navigate our own personal world. I need a personal Messiah.

I found one. The One who fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies made about His life. The One who said, "He who follows Me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). Jesus.

Life wasn't meant to be this hard. But "we all, like sheep, have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). God wired us to do life His way. We did it our way instead. So nothing's working as it should. Not love. Not success. Not relationships. Not the pursuit of happiness.

What Jesus has done for me ... and millions who've put their life in His hands ... is to fix what I could never fix. Make sense of what I could never figure out. And change me from the inside out. So my wife got a better husband. My kids got a better father. And I got a "me" who's connected to the greatest love, the greatest power in the universe.

My journey to wholeness began at an unlikely place. A cross. Where Jesus was broken so I could be whole. Where He took on Himself all the guilt, all the hell of all the sins of all the world. Including mine. "He loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). So I fell on my knees and asked the world's Rescuer to be my Rescuer.

The King put the broken pieces together. Only He could.