"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."
Who would've thought Mother Goose would turn out to be a theologian? Humpty Dumpty is a classic poem that will be told to generation after generation as a nursery rhyme right before bed. It is endearing and takes us back to a simpler time, where apparently egg-like creatures sat on top of large brick walls, but that's not the only reason we love to hear the story of old Humpty's fall. We love Humpty Dumpty because he is us.
We have all built a "brick wall" that we love to sit atop of in our life. We all think too highly of ourselves and our capacities. He who dies with the most toys, or in this case the highest wall, wins right? So we build our wall high. I mean really high. Higher than everyone elses. Our bricks consist of our salary, our spouse, our kids' accomplishments, our gpa, our degree, our high school sports achievements, and even our hobbies. And higher and higher we go up on our brick wall. Just high enough so we can feel important and look down and see that everyone else isn't as "high" as us. You know what one of of our favorite bricks is in the Bible belt? Religious performance. Our Christianity. We build our walls with how many bible studies we lead, how many verses we memorize, how many hours we pray, and even how many of our good deeds out number our bad. Remember though, we are still like Humpty and no matter how high our brick wall is, we are all doomed to fall eventually (Romans 3:23).
There are no big or little falls from a high brick wall. Just a fall. So sin overcomes us and pushes us off our big brick wall and we are left utterly and hopelessly broken. Shattered into a million pieces on the ground below. We try to fix it but we can't seem to put ourselves back together. So we try the self-help section, counseling, and the constant advice of our friends and families, but like the story goes the King's men couldn't even put Humpty back together again.
So we ignore our problem and act like we aren't really that broken, but foolishly there we are laying on the ground in a million different pieces. We can fool the world, but we can't fool the soul and we know that we are internally messed up. When left to ourselves and the King's men and the King's horses we are broken people that are doomed to stay broken the rest of our lives. Not a happy ending for Humpty and not a happy ending for us. It seems...
But wait...what about the King? The King's horses and the King's men couldn't make Humpty whole again, but the story doesn't tell about the King. Another story does though. Not just a king, but the "King of Kings" (Rev. 19:16), who comes into the world not as a king, but as a baby. Who grows up and doesn't get the fame and fortune that Kings do, but rather gets the brokenness and emptiness of this world thrown on him. A King who lives the perfect life that we think we live and begins to restore the world of its brokenness with one miracle and teaching at a time. Can it be? Do we have a chance of being whole again? King Jesus then set his face like flint toward brokenness in Jerusalem, where he was going to cure brokenness forever by being broken himself. On the cross, Jesus took our brokenness of sin on himself, and gave us the wholeness of life in Him for eternity, to be with the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 1:8)
All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But take heart, we have the Holy King, who can wholly put us back together again, by making us wholly His. He takes our broken selves splattered on the ground, and scoops us up into His love, mercy, and grace and begins to piece us back together, and he hasn't let us go since (Phil. 1:6, Hebrews 12:2).
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