Heal my limbs, and joyfully, I'll run to you.
This line from a beautiful song by David Crowder* Band (imagine that) helped me formulate some of the thoughts I haven't been able to put into words about the kind of work I am doing now and the helping profession in general.
This lyric is the prayer I hear bleeding from the hearts of so many of the girls we work with here. Most of our girls know about God and His love and even enjoy attending church on Sundays. Most of them are open to spiritual topics depending on the current circumstances and their mood. However, I would not be able to describe any of our girls right now as joyfully running into the arms of Jesus, which is the image I recieve from this lyric: joyfully, I run to you. Hmm. Heal my limbs. Is the healing of our heart's "limbs" a precursor to the joy of being in the arms of God? Perhaps. Sure, God is big enough to enstill joy in any heart at any time, but I think more often than not this song has a more accurate description of how God interacts with the human soul. Because in the "limbs" of these girls' lives is so much pain. So much dysfunction. So much brokenness. Such a deficit of ability to cope...to run. And right now, breathing through that pain and surviving that dysfunction and dealing with that brokenness...finding a way to cope is their greatest concern. And abstact ideas of God's love and grace don't provide the concrete prescriptions they desire to heal their ailments. Because love has to be action in their life before it can be an idea, and if it has never been an action then they cannot fathom a cross. They cannot understand a Creator. So healing is a process...and God works under the surface and He uses His body to act. He knits back together and whispers truth soothingly. He braces their minds and grasps their hands. And slowly but every so surely, healing begins. As they heal, you see their hearts move...closer to joy and closer to running.
Simple observations and really nothing new that I had not observed on smaller scales before. But this simple lyric and these simple observations have helped me realize how desperately important it is that we, as Christians, remember this. Too often I think we all (myself included) get excited to see legs running to Jesus with joy. And so we describe in detail what we want to see (healthy legs carrying one person's entire self joyfully into the arms of the Lord). Then, we come up with steps of how to produce this situation. We come up with all of the things we may need to facilitate to make sure the running happens and the joy is produced and the self is delivered into the arms. And that is what we focus on. We forget that before the lame man in the Gospels jumped for joy into Jesus' arms, he was a broken, hurting man in need of healing. What ends up happening far too often then is we give our prescription of Joyful Jumping to anyone and everyone...without giving attention or thought to what ailments might counteract the prescription's success. And then we end up with counterfeit, superficial results because we didn't deal with all that was really there. But...what if we were able to take the broken "limbs" to Christ and continue to carry them to Jesus...no matter how many trips up to the rooftop it takes...what if we could be like the friends of the lame man we see in the Scipture instead of playing god? Afterall, He promises to heal, and we know He is able. When a girl who has never had a trustworthy person present in her life, after a certain amount of time in His presence, she will eventually be willing to trust God to touch her. And then if He can touch her, to heal her heart. And through that healing of all the painful, broken things, true joy is produced and true rest can be found in His arms. But a girl who has never had a trustworthy person present in her life cannot be asked to "just trust God, trust His love, trust His goodness." She doesn't know trust. Love. Goodness. If we choose to care more about a result than a person, we will fail in our goals everytime anyway.
May I see them as You do, Lord. May I be an instrument of healing so that Your love may be felt.
This line from a beautiful song by David Crowder* Band (imagine that) helped me formulate some of the thoughts I haven't been able to put into words about the kind of work I am doing now and the helping profession in general.
This lyric is the prayer I hear bleeding from the hearts of so many of the girls we work with here. Most of our girls know about God and His love and even enjoy attending church on Sundays. Most of them are open to spiritual topics depending on the current circumstances and their mood. However, I would not be able to describe any of our girls right now as joyfully running into the arms of Jesus, which is the image I recieve from this lyric: joyfully, I run to you. Hmm. Heal my limbs. Is the healing of our heart's "limbs" a precursor to the joy of being in the arms of God? Perhaps. Sure, God is big enough to enstill joy in any heart at any time, but I think more often than not this song has a more accurate description of how God interacts with the human soul. Because in the "limbs" of these girls' lives is so much pain. So much dysfunction. So much brokenness. Such a deficit of ability to cope...to run. And right now, breathing through that pain and surviving that dysfunction and dealing with that brokenness...finding a way to cope is their greatest concern. And abstact ideas of God's love and grace don't provide the concrete prescriptions they desire to heal their ailments. Because love has to be action in their life before it can be an idea, and if it has never been an action then they cannot fathom a cross. They cannot understand a Creator. So healing is a process...and God works under the surface and He uses His body to act. He knits back together and whispers truth soothingly. He braces their minds and grasps their hands. And slowly but every so surely, healing begins. As they heal, you see their hearts move...closer to joy and closer to running.
Simple observations and really nothing new that I had not observed on smaller scales before. But this simple lyric and these simple observations have helped me realize how desperately important it is that we, as Christians, remember this. Too often I think we all (myself included) get excited to see legs running to Jesus with joy. And so we describe in detail what we want to see (healthy legs carrying one person's entire self joyfully into the arms of the Lord). Then, we come up with steps of how to produce this situation. We come up with all of the things we may need to facilitate to make sure the running happens and the joy is produced and the self is delivered into the arms. And that is what we focus on. We forget that before the lame man in the Gospels jumped for joy into Jesus' arms, he was a broken, hurting man in need of healing. What ends up happening far too often then is we give our prescription of Joyful Jumping to anyone and everyone...without giving attention or thought to what ailments might counteract the prescription's success. And then we end up with counterfeit, superficial results because we didn't deal with all that was really there. But...what if we were able to take the broken "limbs" to Christ and continue to carry them to Jesus...no matter how many trips up to the rooftop it takes...what if we could be like the friends of the lame man we see in the Scipture instead of playing god? Afterall, He promises to heal, and we know He is able. When a girl who has never had a trustworthy person present in her life, after a certain amount of time in His presence, she will eventually be willing to trust God to touch her. And then if He can touch her, to heal her heart. And through that healing of all the painful, broken things, true joy is produced and true rest can be found in His arms. But a girl who has never had a trustworthy person present in her life cannot be asked to "just trust God, trust His love, trust His goodness." She doesn't know trust. Love. Goodness. If we choose to care more about a result than a person, we will fail in our goals everytime anyway.
May I see them as You do, Lord. May I be an instrument of healing so that Your love may be felt.
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