A high-flying Washington lobbyist was getting out of his new Mercedes, when a passing car ripped off the door. When the police arrived, he was hopping mad about the damage to his beautiful new toy. One of the officers shook his head in disgust: "You are something else! You’re so worried about your precious car door that you haven’t even noticed that your arm got ripped off too."
"Oh, no!" said the lobbyist, looking at the bloody stump where his arm used to be. "Where’s my Rolex?"
+ + +
He didn’t even see the trouble he was in! It happens to us all: We focus on the peripheral and miss the core. We fixate on the outside and miss the inside. And for years on end, we labor under the burden of major wounds we’ve neither seen nor named! But the people around us have seen them: Our need to be right and have our way, our need to run everything and always win, our need to never apologize, and our need to get even, our perverse need to belittle others, our need to have lots and lots of whatever, our need never to look the fool, which at times we all are. Our sick need-list is endless.
Every one of those needs is a heart-wound, and behind each one is an irrational, unnamed fear of losing some part of our safety and security, some part of what makes us special. Whatever the shape of our fear, it’s a tireless wall builder and a locksmith. As it goes about its work, it holds us in tense readiness for battle, and in doing that, inflicts endless hurts on the people around us. But despite all its efforts, it never succeeds in making us safe and secure. Despite its power, our fear can never heal our heart-wounds, because it’s blind and cannot see them, even though it causes them.
There’s only one way to heal heart-wounds, and that’s from the inside. Jesus often made this point when he healed someone: "It is your faith that has made you whole." Faith is a God-blessed leap into the dark that overpowers fear by opening our heart to the mighty God. It opens all the locked rooms within us, so we can walk with the Lord through the dark, hidden places that we’ve never dared to explore - we can walk through them, not around them.
A heart that walks in faith sees the world through God’s eyes, and it sees whatever is there. It names our wounds and claims them as our own. It feels the hurts we’ve caused and humbly gives their poisonous roots to Him to be cleansed and healed. And amidst it all, the faithful heart is confident about what comes next, for it knows that the One to whom we’ve entrusted our wounded heart is not just our Lord. He’s our Father.
A year from now, some of us will still be groaning under the weight of the same old heart-wounds that have warped and soured our souls and made us difficult friends. But some of us will be free. Which will you be? The Lord is extending his hand to you. Take his hand, walk with him through the darkness and into the light. Be healed, be whole, be free!
