Heal me!

“You are just the person I was waiting for! Heal me!”

These are the words I rasped out to my physician as she rounded the corner at work yesterday.  After being sick for more than a week, I knew I needed more than I had to make myself better.  I was powerless to accomplish any real change in my condition and she was the only one who had what I needed.

I felt like the leper who said to the Lord Jesus, “If thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.” 

I knew she could heal me because she has done it before.  In fact, last year, she treated me for the very same thing in the very same way, except that day, she was the one that took me to the office for a shot of antibiotics and a shot of steroids.

Twenty-seven hours after having my backside filled with healing drugs, I am glad to say I am much, much, better and I can see a full recovery at the end of the tunnel.

All of us at some point in time are in need of healing – physical, emotional or spiritual, and we all need to reach to the One beyond ourselves who alone has the power to do so.  There have been times of deep grief in my life, when my mother was dying of cancer, for example, that my heart was so full of pain all I could do was cry out, “Lord, help!”  And like my kind physician-friend, He was there with His love and comfort and peace to heal my broken heart.

Sometimes it is a loss we are suffering.  In fact, when I was suffering this week from my respiratory infection, I was also from a heart grief.  My friend had not died, but our circumstances have changed to the point it is not likely we will be seeing much of each other, and not in the way we had hoped.  Our situation and our expectations have been lost.  We are grieving and we are in need of healing.

There is only One who is the Great Physician, the One to heal us wherever that pain, that loss, that ache exists.  He knows our every sorrow and has been touched with our every infirmity in some glorious heavenly way we cannot understand.  Whatever our pain, whatever our loss, we must take it to the out-stretched hands of the Lord Jesus who waits to heal our broken hearts, to ease our lost expectations and to fill us with the joy of Himself in ways we could have never imagined.

“The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion;

slow to anger, and of great mercy.

The LORD is good to all: and His tender mercies are over all His works.

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”

Psalm 145:8,9  Psalm 147:3

A Shovel, Loppers and a Broken Axe

I don't really like azalea bushes. 
 Image by Getty Images via @daylife
That's not a good statement from a girl who lives in a city known as the "Azalea City,"  but let me qualify my statement. I like azalea bushes when they grow wild and free, as you might find them out in the woods.  I do not like them when they have been carved into symmetrical boxes or rounded globes.

That is what prompted the removal of the azalea  bush, or perhaps I should say tree, from the front of our house. It was nineteen years ago this week we moved into our house and I don't remember how tall the azalea bush was then, but it had grown to my height and nearly obscured one of our living room windows. 

Now it is gone.

My husband, using his bare hands,  a shovel, a pair of loppers and a broken axe, removed the huge bush.  Most people when removing a 100+ pound root ball, choose to tie a rope to it and pull it out with a truck or a car, but not my husband.  He did it with those strong arms of his.  I sat in amazement watching as he hacked away at it.  Surprisingly,  the best and most frequent tool he used was the broken axe.

The axe blade was sound, but the handle was split in two.  My husband completely broke the axe handle until it was more like a hatchet with one huge blade.  He used that to free the tangle of roots entwined under the azalea bush.

What a wonderful picture that was to me of our Lord. 

How often our lives present a tangle of twisted roots and thorns and all we have to offer Him is a broken axe.  We look at the mess we have made of ourselves and doubt that the Lord could ever use us in any way whatsoever.  Sometimes He must "break us" a little more before we can truly be useful, removing all that will not conform to His purpose.  Then in His strong hands and through the power of His might, our broken little axe becomes a mighty tool to accomplish His eternal purpose, not only in our lives, put also in the lives of others.  While we may often doubt our own ability, we must never doubt His.

 "Being confident of this very thing, 

that He which hath begun a good work in you 

will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:"

Philippians 1:6

 "For it is God which worketh in you 

both to will and to do of His good pleasure." 

Philippians 2:13

The Feet Under the Table

There were seven pairs beside my own, and they were all different.

One pair of sweet little feet wears clear Princess shoes.  One small pair dangling from the chair  wears tennis shoes.

Two large pairs meet the Scripture's description of "beautiful" because they are ministers of the gospel of Christ.  One pair travels into the courtroom on heels to plead her case and fight for the rights of her clients.

One pair wears the boots of a Marine and can stealthily capture you without your knowledge, until it happens.  The last pair wears heels or flip-flops and captures you with a camera lens instead.

Different feet, but all a gift.  The most precious gift I was given the night of my birthday was to have these seven people, all of whom I love dearly, rest their feet under my table.  To have my husband, all my children and grandchildren and our dear friend to share the evening with me was something I had desired so much and it gave me incredible joy.

There were gifts on the table --gifts I truly loved -- but the the best gift, the gift I will always cherish, were those feet under the table.  As we bowed our heads for prayer before we ate, I thought of how blessed I was to have these very special, very wonderful people in my life.  Each of them is so incredible in their own right, my heart was overcome with thanksgiving and love.  There was no way I could come close to expressing what I felt that night, not then and not now.

As much as I feel emotion toward that experience, it points my mind toward another supper with another family, yet to come.  There will be a day when the Lord Jesus shares a supper with His family and I know He is desiring that moment as we are.

Before the Lord's Supper He told the disciples,  "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer," (Luke 22:15).  Now He waits, I believe with that same desire, to share the Marriage Supper of the Lamb with His children.  Perhaps He waits to see all His children's feet under the table as I did that night, to have them all home, safe and under His wings.  It reminds me of the last line in the hymn, "Brethren We Have Met to Worship":

Then He'll call us home to Heaven, at His table we'll sit down;

Christ will gird Himself and serve us with sweet manna all around.

"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God." Revelation 19:7-9

User Error

For three years I worked in my hospital's computer department.  I had been "loaned" to them, much as one department loans another an IV pump or a pulse oximeter.  It was a challenging and stimulating time during which I learned much that I use to this day.

One of my duties was to take calls from the nurses in the hospital on computer problems.  Over fourteen
Image by utnapistim via Flickryears ago, our nurses were new then to computerized documentation and to dealing with computers on a large scale in their workplace.  When one of the laptops they used for charting would not do what they wanted it to, I would often hear the same thing, "It's broken."  No detail would be given because many of them just didn't understand it enough to give me any detail.

The great majority of the time when I heard this, the issue actually ended up to be what is called "User error".  Which simply means the person using the computer did something wrong to receive the error message or lack of response they did. (I can't tell you how many times the problem was simply that the computer needed to be turned on.)

It was often impossible to convince the staff that "User error" could be the problem, however.  They believed and expected the computers to break, to malfunction and to just be ornery and hateful to them.  I learned it was futile to try to convince them of the "User error", so I would just go about fixing the problem.  They began to call me even when I wasn't on call.  In fact, even after I had stopped working in the computer department and returned to Labor & Delivery, one nurse in another unit called L&D one night to get my home phone number.

"She knows how to fix our computers," the frantic nurse told our L&D night shift nurse.  I was so glad our  nurse knew better than to give out my home phone number (which would have then been posted in nursing units throughout the hospital).  She protected me and I appreciated it.

The nurses would have been much better off if they had adopted the attitude that the computer doesn't usually malfunction, that it isn't really ornery or out to get them.  I have been able to help facilitate this attitude in L&D and I frequently hear "I don't know what I'm doing wrong" instead of "This computer is broken!"

Sometimes when we open the Scriptures we read things we don't understand or can't explain.  We are so much better off if at the very beginning we confess to the Lord that we agree with the Bible when it says,  that "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times," (Psalms 12:6).


We are better to believe the problem is not with the Scriptures, but with our limited understanding.  I have often heard it said that the Bible is the only book which comes "with it's Author", and we know the desire of the Lord is that we understand and apply His Word to our lives.  So if we find a passage that is difficult or confusing to us, let us follow the advice of the Apostle James:

 "If any of you lack wisdom,

 let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, 

and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." 

James 1:5