Now Heal This

I saw the phrase on a billboard along one of our busy streets. With gasoline prices as they are, I ask myself, "Is this trip necessary?" I usually find a way to convince myself it is. I think that many of us will have to rethink how many of these excursions are necessary. Making phone calls is cheaper than gas. So are cards and letters. Even with the price of postage, the mailman can be an associate pastor.

Back to the sign. It is an advertisement for the local hospital. It is about to open a wound care center- something needed. People do get hurt. They do get wounded.

But their headline makes a commentary.

We want to be healed- and right now.

Never mind the time and inconvenience. Is there ever a good time to get sick or hurt? Is it ever convenient? Our lives get disrupted. We get impatient. We want to be healed, and right now.

The sign also implies that we can also "just get fixed." Heal me, please! I have learned that some wounds are never healed. The pain and infection may go away, but scars remain. Like Jacob in the Bible, we walk with a limp from then on.

I have walked with a bit of a limp on occasion since my fall from a ladder over 5 years ago. I'll never be the same. I can't run or exercise as vigorously. I have been taught as well to be more careful. "What in the cathairy where you doing on the ladder anyway?" I'm not as young as I once was. In some ways, I can be just as foolish.

We hold out great expectations. Just heal this, and I'll go on. Do it now, and I'll be fine afterward. The medical profession, ministers, counselors, and other helpers are often asked to do the impossible. "Fix me, doc."

People often can't be fixed. A physician friend of mine once admitted that doctors often throw prescriptions at a problem. People think that if you just give them a pill they'll be fine. My wife says that often doctors practice pharmacology and not medicine. It's because people have grown to expect more than they should, and the healing professionals have attempted to do in some cases what is impossible.

No wound heals instantaneously unless some miracle occurs. I haven't seen too many of those. Healing is process- often long and frustrating. I am called to be a healer- of spiritual and emotional wounds. I listen, I pray. Sometimes I do some good. But the truth is, I can heal no one. I can't heal myself.

But I know Someone who can. They have said that time heals all wounds. Not all. Some remain until death. Some wounds linger on past the death of a person. Some of us have wounded others and the wounds remain after we are gone. People come to me as a pastor and in effect say, "Now heal this" I'm sorry I can't. But I know Someone who can. But even He often leaves us with a limp- a reminder of a painful encounter. These are life changing experiences.

Great expectations. Great possibilities.

Hospitals, doctors, wound care specialists, pastors, counselors, helpers all do their part. But some things we have to live with. We will never be fully healed on this side of eternity.

The Bible promises full and complete healing for those in Christ on the other side. That is greatest expectation and possibility that I hold forth. Things will not always be as they are. In Heaven, they will get better. Heaven will heal all wounds.

Healing,

Dr. Dave