wounds on Outsiders

Context This Sunday’s passage takes place during Jesus’ long final journey to Jerusalem (which takes up over a third of Luke’s Gospel). In the preceding pericope the disciples have asked Jesus to in...

Context This Sunday’s passage takes place during Jesus’ long final journey to Jerusalem (which takes up over a third of Luke’s Gospel). In the preceding pericope the disciples have asked Jesus to in...

Sometimes we have to “step over” our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there...

Like the Good Samaritan, may we not be ashamed of touching the wounds of those who suffer, but try to heal them with concrete acts of love.

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

The story is told (as in, it’s made up!) of a small dog that had been struck by a car and lay wounded by the side of the road. A doctor driving by noticed the dog was still alive, stopped his car, pic...

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...

Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? D...

In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.

Living with a family wounded by a loss you can't remember is like sitting behind a tall person at a movie theater. The people around you are laughing, crying, reacting to something, but you have n...

We don’t know what we are doing, and I think this is especially true about the way our society deals with mental health. In just the past fifteen years, I have witnessed a massive shift in how evangel...

No one heals himself by wounding another.

The renowned scholar and musician Albert Schweitzer’s life was turned upside down one summer morning in 1896 while reading his Bible. He came upon Matthew 16:25: “For whosoever will save his life shal...

Holy Scripture is witness to the light of God that arises in the midst of the deepest darkness to illumine the darkness. Scripture is not witness to the light taking away the darkness or exempting peo...

All the trials we endure cannot be compared to these interior battles.

A Chinese Christian who heard me speak once asked me if I would write a tract about suffering for his fellow believers in the Orient. I told him I would think about it. But when I did, I realized that...

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...

People can't seem to get it through their heads that there is never any healing or closure. Ever. There is only a short pause before the next "horrifying" event. People forget there is s...

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain an...

All-Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment.  We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

At university, I knew a guy called Captain Scarlet (nicknamed after the lead puppet in a cult TV series to which he bore a striking resemblance). The Captain was the only nineteen-year-old I’ve ever k...

The furniture salesman said the couch would seat five friends without a problem. Then I realized, I don’t have five friends without a problem. Old joke—sorry—but still. It reminds me of the old saying...

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 ...

Dawn grew up in a family in which she felt she had a fairly happy childhood. But in her adult years she struggled greatly with emotional, psychological, and physical maladies. She never felt a sense o...

What often continues to shape our stories (interpretations) are the implicit emotional responses to our wounds. We must be willing to attend to our wounds and address the emotions embedded in our woun...

Henri Nouwen is a well-loved writer and theologian who taught for decades at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, but he left behind the academy to serve among the disabled popula...

Wounds cannot be cured without searching.

Paradoxically…healing means moving from your pain to the pain…When you keep focusing on the specific circumstances of your pain, you easily become angry, resentful, and even vindictive. You are inclin...

Other people are going to find healing in your wounds. Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts."