31 Days: Learning to Just BE... Healed {Day 11}

 

 

We were late. Hurry! Hurry!

She stopped at the corner of the building, paused, and began backing up.

I recognized that look on her face. Fear.

I heard yelling. My pace quickened, my heartbeat with it.

 

I turned the corner to see a man yelling at a woman. Face red.

He yells some obscenities. Sees me, all the babes around me, hastily passed and said, "Sorry."

 

He had punched the fourteen year old boy inside, before we had arrived.

Thank God, we were late.

 

"Sorry." He had said, and I knew he meant it. "Sorry, I can't control this monster. Sorry, for who I am." I almost heard him say.

 

Police were called and I knew, he would become even more sorry.

I was sorry for him. In fact, after the initial "Mama Bear" instinct had settled down, all I felt was compassion for him.

 

I, too, have known anger. Or, anger has known me.

I, too, have felt helpless under it's power.

 

I recognized that look of fear on my daughter's face, because, I, too, have made others afraid.

Anger and fear always go hand in hand.

 

Sorry won't help, though. The "sorry" of regret, guilt, shame, and condemnation only brings death inside.

But, Godly sorrow? Now, that brings repentance, and repentance is a turning away from darkness to light.

 

"For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There's no regret for that kind of sorrow.

But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death."

{2 Corinthians 7:10}



There is a deadly progression of Bitterness, and Anger is in the line-up.
Unforgiveness leads to Resentment leads to Hatred leads to Retaliation leads to Anger leads to Rage leads to Violence leads to Murder.

Just watch one hour of news and you can see the evidence of this. Domestic violence, murder, suicide are the obvious ones, but what about the not-so-obvious...
Isn't avoidance of someone because of dislike a form of hatred? Isn't gossip a form of murder (by tongue)? These are the hard questions I ask myself.

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."

{James 1:19-20}

 

What I want is healing for all the broken places. It is difficult to travel on this "highway of holiness" when you are crippled.

Then He reminds me of the young cripple, Mephibosheth, who was brought to dine at the King's table.

That is who I am, broken, but healed by Him. Crippled, but made whole in Him.

"... instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God."

{Acts 3:7-8}

Tonight, I pray for the man who said, "Sorry," and who may be in a cell... to be healed, in Jesus' mighty name. And, for the one that I assume to be his son, the one he punched... forgiveness.

~ christa jean ~
~~~

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