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MEDITATION:

Written by David Powlison (1949-2019), an author, speaker, and Biblical counselor.  This is an excerpt from his book “Good and Angry.”

Perhaps you find it curiously liberating to say you’ll never get over a particular hurt.  How freeing to admit the truth. A human being is not meant to deal with a terrible wrong by having it simply washed away. So, you don’t have to chase an impossibility. You don’t have to try to numb yourself with various substances and activities. You don’t have to feel like a failure because you are not happy and smiley all the time. If you aren’t expecting to find some magic that will leave you unmarked, then you can get down to working through your painful experience.  Perhaps, though, it’s not a relief to hear that some experiences will never go away. Instead, you feel even more hopeless. But there is hope. Yes, the experience will always be there, but you do not need to be forever defined by what happened. The reasons for realistic hope run deeper than any hurt. You won’t forget, but you do not need to endlessly revisit what happened. You do not need to be imprisoned in your reactions. It’s never easy to transmute a very deep furnace of pain into something fruitful. It is refreshing to admit, “That pain will mark me. I will never ‘get over it.’” You would be untrue to your humanity if you simply got over it. Instead, a new sense of life purpose will in some way be shaped by what happened. A significant experience will mark you for life; it should mark you. But the pain and hatred and despair do not need to remain a running sore infected by rage, mistrust, and callousness. There is a way to go through it and come out in a good place.

PRAYER:

Written by Debbie McDaniel. a contemporary Christian writer.

Dear God, We confess our need for you today. We need your healing and your grace. We need hope restored. We need to be reminded that you work on behalf of those you love, constantly, powerfully, completely. Forgive us for trying to fix our situations all on our own. Forgive us for running all different directions and spinning our wheels to find help, when true help and healing must be found first in You. Forgive us for forgetting how much we need you, above everyone and everything else. We come to you and bring you the places we are hurting. You see where no one else is able to fully see or understand. You know the pain we’ve carried. The burdens. The cares. You know where we need to be set free. We ask for your healing and grace to cover every broken place. Every wound. Every heartache. Thank you that you are able to do far more than we could ever imagine. Thank you for your Mighty Power that acts on behalf of your children. We reach out to you, and know that you are restoring and redeeming every place of difficulty, every battle, for your greater glory. Thank you that you will never waste our pain and suffering. We release to you this day every need and problem we’ve carried or tried hard to control. We believe in your goodness to see us through. We love you. We need you today.