God's Healing Love

Acadia Morning

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness."

Lamentations 2:22-23

Click here to read the complete text.

Near the end of July, the Charlottes Rhodes Butterfly Park releases hundreds of Monarch butterflies. Children watching this are filled with excitement and wonder seeing these Monarchs launch into an awakening world. It's an awakening world pretty much like their own. The beauty of the fleeting butterfly and the innocence of the child.

In the real world there are sin-sick souls struggling with alcoholism, drugs sometimes resulting homelessness. The real world has faithful disciples coping with broken marriages, poverty, and addiction. These are wounded, barren, desert-like places.

Lamentations describes them this way:   

"Your wound is as deep as the sea.

 Who can heal you?"

Lamentations also declares God’s healing love and mercy as renewing sin-sick souls just as the morning sun faithfully rises. 

That's Michael's story. He came to church occasionally. Folks recognized that he was struggling with addiction issues and homelessness. One Sunday, for joys and concerns, he announced he was clean and sober. The folks praised him for this achievement. 

A few weeks later, he came to Tuesday's Bible Study with his head bloodied. He'd been assaulted at a shelter. “I can’t live this way no more,” he cried. “Nobody is supposed to live this way.” 

The Tuesday Bible Study group recognized this as a real-time Prodigal Son story. They surrounded him with prayer, love, and offers of support. 

After his assault, he returned to the place of hope in God’s steadfast, healing,  love. There, among the people of the class, he found God's love with mercies never ending. 

It is my firm conviction that in our wounded, barren, desert-like times, God's healing love touches us restoring our wounded souls.