A friend sits by her father's bedside at hospice.  Waiting for the inevitable.  Reflecting.  Having hard talks and the profound kind of laughter that two people share in a crisis.  As I checked on her the other day, I said how beautiful those moments are.  But hard.  She said that her friend called them brutiful.  Beautiful.  Brutal.

Yes.  Yes, indeed.  Brutiful.  What a perfect description.

Yesterday, someone else mentions on Facebook how burdened she is for friends going through a hard time.  She gets a hearty "A-men" from multiple others who are carrying the burdens of loved ones.  So many are hurting.  And so many more are hurting for them.

Brutiful.

It's the gospel.  In a nutshell.  This brutiful work.  

Friends who line the hallways of a hospital while a precious mother delivers a stillborn baby.  Knowing they won't see her to comfort her.  But determined to be physically close and offer the prayer cover she and her husband need in those brutiful moments.

Driving your dad to chemotherapy.  Knowing the cancer is terminal.  Holding his hand in the long hours.  Words are few, but the moments are precious.  Brutiful, in fact.

Gritting your teeth through dust and dirt and long work hours in the hot sun, the stench that comes with poverty filling your nose.  Determined to build a school for the children who have so little.  A simple building that symbolizes hope.  And a future.  Brutiful.

THIS is the gospel come to life.  Being broken for others.  Allowing your heart to break for what breaks God's.  All these moments I've described collide in the simple and challenging message that Jen Hatmaker offered last Thursday night.