Thursday, November 10, 2016

Thankful for the natural process of healing

I am thankful that God created us to heal, and to be healed.  By this, I mean that we heal routinely throughout our earthly lives, and we will be healed once and for all, eternally.  I am thankful that God is the greatest healer of all, ever.  Healing is what He does, along with redeeming, saving, delivering and restoring.


Healing on earth usually takes time, and often the rehabilitation process is painful.

However, with time and effort (especially time), healing comes to pass, until we find ourselves at the brink of our final, complete healing when we pass over to our eternal life where all things will be perfected and made new.

God is the great healer, and thus there is always hope.

"In this world you will have trouble," Jesus gently warned us,"but take heart, for I have overcome the world."

In the perfect, new world that Jesus has gone to prepare for us, there is a river of life running down the main street.  On each side of the river stands the tree of life.  The Bible doesn't say that the boulevard is lined with trees; it says that The Tree of Life stands on both sides of the river, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations (see Revelation 22:2).  I'm not sure what this means, but I think it might be something like this:

The river of life stands for the Spirit of God, spilling out to produce lush, flourishing growth wherever He goes.  The tree of life is many things, including Jesus, the root of Jesse, who called Himself the True Vine. The tree of life could also encompass the people of God, who are branches spreading out from the root of Christ, planted next to the river where there is an eternal, infinite source of life from the Spirit.

It's all a bit confusing and symbolic, but the point is that God is life, and He longs to share His life with us by healing us, and then, through us, healing the nations.

In this broken, sin-stained world, dandelions stubbornly force their way up through asphalt and concrete, golden blooms on savory greens, even in the most barren of habitats.  Babies squeeze brutally through birth canals into the bright lights of hospital rooms, and begin to squall, mingling pain and blood with the unspeakable wonder of fragile new life.  Love surges in the heart of a lover for his beloved, a mother for her child, a brother for his sister, a soldier for his comrade.  Winter snows melt away to the upcropping of daffodils, and the sun rises every morning, bringing light every day, even when that light may be dimmed by cloud cover.  These are all profound messages of the care and renewal of God, coming to play despite the curse of sin that constantly provokes deterioration and decomposition.

One day, everything is going to be all right.  Until then, we live in an ebb and flow of destruction and restoration, deterioration and healing.  God has never abandoned us, and this is why we heal.  We always heal.

When my Grandma died, my world was rocked.  I thought, "How can life go on, without my Grandma in the world?"  And yet, it did.  I drove to the store to buy milk for my children.  Shocked, I saw a whole bunch of other people out in their cars, driving wherever they needed to go, to work, to school, to the store like me.  The sun climbed  higher in the sky as the morning progressed.  It was amazing to realize that on this most earth-shattering day, the trucks had still delivered the milk to the stores from the farms and the bottling factories.  We ate.  We worked.  We drove and cooked and did math problems.  We washed dishes and put gas into the car and paid the bills.  Night came and we slept.  Meanwhile, Grandma lives in glory with Jesus.

Life goes on.  We keep doing what needs to be done, and we heal through the process of learning a new normal, all the time remembering that Jesus is Lord, and in His time He will heal everyone who will surrender to His loving hands.

I am thankful for healing.