Wounded

WOUNDED

Every one of us – me, you, everyone else in the world – we’ve all been wounded.

Wounded by life.  Wounded by people and relationships.  Wounded by chance.  And, sometimes, wounded by our own bad choices.

And then God moves through our lives – in various ways, various shapes, various forms – to bring healing. 

Healing to our heart.  Healing to our soul.  Healing to our mind.  Healing to our relationships.  Sometimes even healing to our bodies.

God brings this healing to us in a thousand different ways:

• Sometimes it’s in the more obvious God-Driven ways – a particularly moving worship experience, a compelling or convicting sermon, or that passage of scripture we come across “accidentally” at just the right time.

• Much more often, I think, God brings his healing in much more subtle, unexpected, creative, “yeah, only God could’ve thought of that” ways.

• Sometimes it’s through other people – through their skill & expertise, their friendship, their touch, their compassion, their encouragement, their love, their writing, or maybe just their example.

• Sometimes it’s through music – the song on the radio that chokes you up so much you have to pull the car over.

• Sometimes it’s through nature – the sunrise or sunset that brings a tear to your eye, the moonlight over the ocean and the sound of the waves washing over the sand, or a certain pattern of sunbeams breaking through around a cloud that makes you know (you’re not quite sure how you know, but you do know) that God is speaking to you.

• Sometimes it’s through the Holy Spirit silently whispering an idea, an insight, an inspiration into your conscious awareness.

• And sometimes it is truly miraculous – completely out of nowhere, unexplainable, indefinable.  Those are the really cool ones that leave doctors scratching their heads and awkwardly saying things like, “I’m not quite sure how to say this and I don’t know how to explain it, but…”

• “…we can’t find any trace of the cancer.”

• “…you have perfect 20/20 vision.”

• “…your daughter seems to have as perfect hearing as any other three year old.”

• For me one time, it was the seven year old girl who was struggling to choke back the tears as she tried to read aloud from Mark 15 about the ultimate act of healing that was executed – literally– almost two thousand years ago.

• Yes, “for it is by his stripes…”

Which all leads to the question:  Why does God do it?  Why is he so active and present and moving in our lives to bring us such profound healing in such amazing ways?

I guess the “right-off-the-tip-of-your-tongue” (and oh-ever-so-churchy) answer would be “because he loves us.”

While that’s certainly a truism, the simpler – but deeper – answer is two-fold:

a)  Because all of us are so desperately in need of healing;

…and…

b)  Because that’s who God is – it’s what he does.  It’s simply his nature.  He is Jehovah Rapha (one of the OT names for God) – “The God Who Heals.”

A much more important question, in my mind, is “What are we supposed to do with this healing?”

Well, you know the answer to that.  We’re supposed to heal others – to be a source of healing to each soul whose path we cross.

Paul could have just as easily – and accurately – used the word “healing” in place of “comfort” in II Corinthians 1:3-4, which would then read:

“The Father of compassion and the God of all healing, who heals us of our afflictions so that we can heal others with the healing we ourselves have received from God.”

So, yes – me, you, all of us – have been on the receiving end, at various times in various ways, of truly incredible, humbling, awe-inspiring, and – at times – absolutely breath-taking and mind-blowing healing.  And the source is always God.

Which leads us to the subject of people.  You know, those people.  The ones who are hardest to love, and impossible to like.

• The person that everyone else looks down on – or overlooks entirely.

• The person who looks down on you, or overlooks you entirely.

• The person you’re angry with.

• The person you’re afraid of.

• The person who stresses you out and gets on your nerves.

• The person who has hurt you, betrayed you, and violated your trust.

• The person who’s been cruel or insensitive, malicious or unkind.

Yeah, those people.

Because God wants you to see them as they are, for what they are.

Wounded.

Just like me, just like you.

Wounded.

And it is not your job to heal them – you can’t do that on your own.

It is your job to pray for their healing, to pray for your role in their healing, and then to do what you can to be a source of healing.

No more…but absolutely no less.

“But what if…” your mind races to ask.

I don’t know.  What if…what?  What if they reject you and curse you and mock you and ridicule you and call you a demon and then drive ten inch spikes through your wrists and ankles and then hang you up to laugh at you as you die?

Ok, you get the point.

And as much as I love to be the guy with all the right answers, the truth is I don’t have any more answers than you do.

But I do know the right question.

The right question – always – is, “God, what do you want me to do with this?”

And I know that the One who does have all the right answers is Jehovah Rapha.

The God Who Heals.

The God who heals me.  The God who heals you.  The God who wants to heal the world.  Through us.

“For it is by his stripes that we have been healed.”

“The God of all healing…who heals us…so that we can heal others.”

– Greg Smith, August 2010