wounds on Suffering

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...

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...

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?...

Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib...

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...

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...

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

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...

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?...

Pastor: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.  People: He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; Pastor: and as one from w...

To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you...

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...

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...

Truly, it is allowed to weep. By weeping, we disperse our wrath; and tears go through the heart, even like a stream.

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 ...

If sickness has come into the world through sin, which is conceded, it must be got out of the world through God’s great remedy for sin, the cross of Jesus Christ. If sickness is only a natural condi...

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...

How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?

In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.”

One of the challenges, at least in the western church, is an inability to deal with our wounds in a healthy way. Our training as Christians has been focused on Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday ...

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...

Jesus, our Great Physician, our sins have brought wounds on ourselves and others. Heal our hearts first, that we would no longer desire the sins that have only brought us and others pain. Go on to hea...

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...

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

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."

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...

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...

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.

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...