One: Lent Devotional ናሙና

Wounded healers

It’s easy to sit back and examine the lives of others. Sipping at the cup of comparison and judgement, we can find ourselves feeling rather smug.

However, as we honestly examine the shape of our lives, we make room for Christ to tend to our wounds, leading us towards others in love. When the Spirit of the others-centred Christ takes up residence in our lives, we become those who are centred on others.

Suffering can either harden us or humble us. If our hurts soften our hearts and we allow humility to run its course, it will lead us into washing the feet of those in pain. Like Christ, our wounds may never go away, but they can form us beyond self-absorption and towards co-suffering.

We so often believe that the broken and fragmented parts of our stories rule us out from serving others, when in fact our woundedness can be embraced as a gift and a guide, keeping us on humility’s highway in the direction of others.

Prayer:

Dear God, might we feel compassion like Christ did; feel pain in the deepest places; might we reach down and reach out until our lives become cruciform, shaped into the cross of Christ. Compassion is the radical cross-shaping of a life. Shape us so. Break us, so we might proclaim good news to the broken. Amen.

By Stuart Bothwell

Stuart helps lead Lagan Valley Vineyard Church in Northern Ireland.