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February 12th 2010
Although I was forty years old, I sat enthralled among the room full of children, watching the movie, Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
I don’t know who wrote this profound nursery rhyme or why it was written, but I’m sure there was more to its purpose than a broken egg and rhyming words.
To me, Humpty Dumpty is a picture of us all. He went where he shouldn’t have been, fell and broke beyond repair.
Many thousands of years ago God created man and woman. He made us to be an object of his love. For a while, Adam and Eve lived in harmony with their loving Creator in a picture perfect paradise. All was well, until they each decided they wanted more. Adam and Eve wanted to be in control. No longer were they satisfied being second to the God who created them.
Deliberately, Adam disobeyed God and removed himself from relationship with God. It would be like a fifteen year old son who says to his dad, “Dad, I’m grown up now. I don’t what to be your son or under your authority. I want to be free to come and go whenever I want. I want to be my own boss, so I’m moving out on my own.” As much as every parents’ heart would break and knowing that he would never make it on his own, if he set his mind on going, he really could not be keep from running away.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. He should never have been on a wall. Eggs should not sit on walls. Adam and Eve, like you and I, were created to revolve around God as our centre, much like a bicycle wheel revolves around its axle. Remove God from the centre of our life and we cannot fulfill our divinely intended purpose.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. So did our parents, Adam and Eve. They fell out of relationship with our creator, and as a result, they along with all their children, broke. At that catastrophic moment in history, we became self-centered rather than God-centered, and like a wheel with no axle we’ve been broken ever since.
Another picture might clarify our historic dilemma. Imagine a child with a kite on a string, flying freely in the breezy blue sky. The kite is too hundred feet above the little boys’ head, waving wonderfully in the wind. Now the kite says, “If only I was not bound by this string, I could fly higher than an eagle. I would be free to go where I want to go. Only the string holds me back.” Imagine the kite twisting in such a way as to break free of its restrictive string—free at last! What do you think would happen? Apart from its string, the kite would plummet clumsily to the earth and be broken beyond repair—it’s the restraint of the string that helps the kite fly. And that’s the way it was for Adam and Eve also. It was their relationship and submission to God that kept them strong, healthy and purposeful. When that was broken, they were no longer free. They fell and broke.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. We humans have a serious problem. Like Humpty, we are irreparably broken. Our relationship with our Creator God is broken, our relationships with other people are broken and even our relationship with ourselves is broken, we develop all sorts of ideas and plans which are intended to lead us back to healthy relationships to make us whole again—psychologically, socially, theologically, but nothing can put us back together again.
Now, look at the dilemma from our Father God’s perspective. All of his children have rebelled. They wanted to be independent. They have run away from him. But he loves then and wants nothing more than to have his children return to the family. He wants to be their dad and restore them to health. He wants to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Only God, our Creator is able to repair our brokenness. The conclusion is that we are all irreparably broken and can only be restored by God Himself.
Working our way through the Twelve Step Journey will help us partner with our Creator in restoring our birthright, which is wholeness and usefulness. Focusing on our relationship with God will help us take our eyes off ourselves, and others and replace our obsessive need for their approval with healthy self-esteem and fulfillment.
- Barry Buzza
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