past on Stuffing Pain

What is the shape of your pain? Is your pain a gaping wound? Is it stuffed into the back corner of a closet, or is it neatly categorized and filed away with annotations that no one but you understand?...

Remember Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations? Her entire life was defined by the fact that she was jilted on her wedding day. People can become very attached to their pain and i...

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die. Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered.

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

It is not the experience of today that drives us mad; it is the remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday.

My husband, Doug, is an athlete whose body is protesting. He has had numerous knee injuries and torn his Achilles tendon twice. Doctors have operated on him, put casts on him and sent him home, thereb...

Too often we are given a choice—emotions or faith and belief. Yet as Dan Allender and Tremper Longman observe,  Emotion links our internal and external worlds. To be aware of what we feel can open ...

Gracious God, how often we have withheld a word of kindness, of truth and of love. We have lifted our voices in quick criticism rather than gracious encouragement. Through our actions and inactions we...

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love ...

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light fo...

There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not be...

Gracious God, you receive us in your gentle arms. You anoint us with your healing presence. Help us to be mindful of your mercy, your deep compassion for the wounds of the world, and your willing pres...

Holy Spirit, open our minds to the truth that hurts and the truth that heals. Open our hearts to the love that challenges and the love that embraces. Amen.

Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well?” Do I? Do I really? I’ve been this way so long It’s what people expect of me It’s what I expect of me I know this life I’m getting by Is it good? No Is...

I have found it is impossible to be unforgiving toward those I am praying for. It’s not easy to start praying for them; it’s one of the hardest things I’ve done. But when I make that person an object ...

The only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it. God will waste nothing.

“Shall we never never get rid of this Past? … It lies upon the Present like a giant’s dead body.”

Hear the good news: And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of ...

Joseph’s brothers, meaning to harm him, sold him into Egypt, but in reality God sent him there so that he could save Jacob’s family and many others from death by starvation Robert E. Longacre, J...

Most pastors carry hurt from ministry—words that landed wrong, criticism that cut deep, the weight of unmet expectations—not to mention just the ordinary hurts everyone acquires from living in a sinfu...

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

The birth of Jesus Christ is the nerve center of history, a kind of ganglion that connects all the fibers of mankind’s nervous system. His birth brings the past experiences (summarized in Matthew 1:1–...

Pastor: Our help is in the name of the Lord, People: who made heaven and earth.   Pastor: If You, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? People: But with You...

The Upside-Down Kingdom The final Sunday of the church year is often called Christ the King Sunday. As we move towards Advent, the lectionary readings typically grow more eschatological, focusing on ...

We ask you, God, to help and defend us. Deliver the oppressed, pity the insignificant, raise the fallen, show yourself to the needy, heal the sick, bring back those of your people who have gone astray...

Repentance resulting from self-examination is a lifelong endeavor, occasionally surfacing in the public or private act of confession as an act of “courageous memory” in recalling one’s past.

Father Greg Boyle, founder and director of Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles, has put together a team of physicians trained to remove the tattoos of ex-gang members. The Service is crucial for th...

Author David Seamands once wrote, “Children are the best recorders but the worst interpreters.” I remember a lot about being a kid. I remember colors and moments, arguments and smells… Though my me...