Desperate Delight

Healing Balm

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”   (Psalms 147:3)

I was thinking about my first days in Junior High School. You know how nervous you can be about going to a new school for the first time? Especially when you are the youngest. It was magnified because I was walking with crutches and a cast on my left knee.

Still, at that age, one of my most favorite things to do was ride my bike. I loved to ride as hard as I could. Find a pile of rocks, put on my brakes and skid. That is what I had done, when I was injured, but had lost control. I fell on the rocks tearing my knee in three places. Twenty-one stitches later I had a cast from above my knee to below preventing me from bending it. Even worse, breaking open the stitches.     

Doctor visits after the cast came off were sheer pain. As he changed the dressing, he would pull away gauze which had grown into the wound. It reopened the area that was trying to heal, making the wound deeper.  Finally my dad said, “No more.” He then bought new gauze from the drugstore coated with cellophane. My knee healed in no time flat.  I think seeing what the doctor was doing to me hurt my dad more than it hurt me.

The Christian life is made up of walking, running and falling. Our Heavenly Father never lets us get beyond His reach, but He does let us fall. He will even withdraw the sense of His presence (although He never really leaves us) as we surrender, fall, and try again to make it work. Feeling like there is a part of us taken each time we return.  

We try to put ourselves back together.  Patch it over, thinking we are all healed. When indeed, as we try again to make our circumstances work apart from Him, the wound gets even deeper and even more painful.  Remembering in our pain, the peace, joy, and rest we used to have with our Father. 

 

As the wound has deepened, so does our love for the Father.  We begin to grasp His tender love for us that has felt more of the pain than we have. Even though scars may remain they serve as a reminder of where we have been. The pain.  His scars He bears for you. He promises deep healing from the inside out. More of Him occupies our broken heart than before. There is more peace and joy and rest than we remembered.

You know, my dad never tired of taking care of me. If anything he was more relentless as time went on.  His desire and passion was for my healing.  How much more is our heavenly Father’s desire. He never tires of taking us back, healing and restoring us. His heavenly embrace awaits us.

I will praise You, O Lord, among the nations

I will sing of You among the peoples

For great is Your love, reaching to the heavens

Your faithfulness reaches to the skies

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens

Let Your glory be over the earth.  (Psalms 57:9-11)