One line from the movie Unbroken, which we watched last night, has been playing over and over in my mind, “If I can take it, I will make it.” It echoes Nietzsche’s “What does not destroy me makes me stronger.” One can be beaten and tortured yet remain unbroken if he does not allow it. It has happened time and time again that people go through unimaginable difficulties and challenges, they go through it unbroken and they come out even stronger. Indeed if I can take anything life deals out to me, I can make my life better.
God has given me life. He has also given me a spirit with which to make something out of that life. It is not the food I need to sustain my body. People can go without food and survive just on water but they will not survive with a broken spirit. It is not wealth that will buy me anything I need. Often, what sustains and keeps the spirit alive cannot be bought by money. And paradoxically, it is in blessed, broken and given to others that I make my sprit stronger and make my life better.