Broken Becomes Beautiful

By Anna Bentley

In June of this year a bunch of people from our young adults ministry at CCV, Sacred Space, headed out to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was a last minute 'God-incident' that I even ended up going on the team (but that's a whole other

blog!) Excited and apprehensive, we headed out to volunteer with a number of organisations working with men, women and children involved in sex trafficking.

As you can imagine it was an intense environment, being in a city shrouded in such darkness. On first impression you would see no hope or light in the city. However, the more we worked with the different organisations we saw that in fact there is hope, and God is very much at work in

Cambodia. 

But as we watched young children walking the streets, waiting for their next 'customer', my heart broke. At times it was difficult to hold back the tears. I just wanted to pick up these children, bring them to a place of security and protect them from all that takes place on the streets.

During our trip we went to a village called Svay Pak, a place known for sex trafficking and pedophilia. Yet, there was beauty among the brokenness in that village. We worked with an organisation called Agape International Missions, which had been set up by an amazing Christian couple who wanted to share God's love in a community only known for its false intimacy.

Throughout the week our team helped to teach the kids from the village, and I was teaching dance and drama in a room now known as 'Rahab 1'. However, a few years earlier, that very room had been a brothel. 12 tiny rooms had been ripped down when Agape purchased the building and it

was now being used to release creativity and to share God's love with some amazing young people. 

Where there was once only death and darkness, there was now abundant life and joy.

The tears began to roll down my cheeks as I stood in that place. But they were tears of joy, as I realised that what the enemy had used for evil, God was now turning around for His good. This was a story of redemption.

We later met one of the girls who had been in room Number 9 of the brothel. She had been locked away and had several men bought to her each day. But since Agape moved into the village, she had been taken out of slavery, given a new life, a job, hope for the future and was now happily

married. Again, I was an emotional mess as I looked at her wedding photos and saw how she had once been so broken and now through the love of God, she had been made incredibly whole and beautiful.

God had written her redemption story.

I came away with the sense that no place was too dark and no person too broken for God to redeem and restore what has gone before.

A very wise woman once shared this scripture with me:

Psalm 127:1 If God doesn't build the house, the builders only build shacks.

Sometimes God takes the most broken, run down of people and makes them into the most beautiful of creations. He chooses to take the places that the world has written off and He rewrites His story of grace. When we allow God to rebuild what we or others have broken down, He rebuilds us in such a way that we become more beautiful than we ever thought we could be. 

I saw this in Cambodia, I see this in my own life and I see that God is writing these redemption stories all over our community. So whether I find myself in a slum in Cambodia or walking through the streets of Coleraine, God is continually showing me that nobody and no place is beyond His outstretched arms of grace.

Isaiah 61: He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives... 

...to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair...

...They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated...

 Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land...