He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:3
It has become a routine thing to see people walking around with braces on their knees, canes in their hands, pushing walkers, wearing sports tape on their arms, knees, etc., or wearing boots on their foot for some kind of injury. It is also routine to ask about their injury, offer condolences, wish them a speedy healing process, then go on about our daily routine and forget that encounter. That is just human nature.
It doesn’t really affect us much unless it happens to us. About four weeks ago, I felt a sudden pain in my right foot. It was so strange because I don’t remember doing anything to cause this, and I didn’t have any pain when it occurred. As a friend of mine likes to say, “You know your body is getting older when you go to bed just fine, and then you wake up injured.”
After a thorough examination on the outside of the foot by my resident doctor, he determined that since it was not swollen or bruised, all was well. I just probably rolled it over!
With that diagnosis in mind, I taped up the foot, put on comfortable shoes, and continued to walk on it for the next two weeks with a slight limp and some pain, but nothing unbearable. As a last resort, I visited a real doctor for an x-ray, maybe a cortisone shot, and an expected dismissal. Not to be. The x-ray revealed a break, but in his words, “Good news is you don’t need surgery. Bad news is you get to wear a boot for six weeks.”
I relate this story because this experience has taught me a lot about the healing process. Healing doesn’t happen over night, it takes time. Healing is defined as the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again. We all know that it takes time for bones to mend, wounds to heal, but it can also be a lengthy process for us to heal spiritually and emotionally at times in our lives.
Life brings so many occasions for “breaks” such as betrayal or rejection and wounds such as loss or abuse. Just like my foot, we often don’t know what we did to deserve the pain, rejection, or betrayal, and we don’t remember how, when, or why it happened. We don’t know we are injured until the pain is intense. Doctors can treat the physical wounds that we sustain in life, but only God can help us heal the spiritual and emotional wounds.
Just like physical wounds, spiritual and emotional wounds must be treated. Spiritual and emotional healing is a process, and even though God is the Great Physician, we have a role to play in the healing. Just as we would clean a wound or set a broken bone, spiritual and emotional wounds have to be cleaned and made right. Many of our these wounds are inflicted on us by others, but we make it worse by being unwilling to forgive. When we can finally start the healing that forgiveness affords, we can leave behind all the bitterness, pain, resentfulness and anger.
In Mark 8, Jesus heals the blind man in Bethsaida, but he didn’t do it immediately. He healed him over time by working with him, talking to him and asking him what he was experiencing. At first, the man said that he saw people looking like trees walking, but after more prayer and Jesus’ touch, he began to see clearly.
In our healing process many times it is hard to pray because we feel let down or abandoned by God. It is in these times, when Satan moves in to detract us from the healing process. Susie Larson says, “The enemy loves to see us shifting our gaze from God and His sovereignty to people and circumstances. It is at this point that we begin to reason that if they hadn’t done this or that, we wouldn’t be where we find ourselves nursing the wounds of betrayal or pain.”
God is sovereign, and only He can lead us through total and complete healing. The saying, accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be is the only way to heal. Let God lead us from strength to strength, and glory to glory.