A Year of Prayer: Season One Weekday DevotionalsUzorak

Have you ever seen a child fall over, not have any scratches or cuts, but run to Mum or Dad just the same as if their limbs had broken clean off? Perhaps you were that dramatic child, seeking comfort and assurance when the littlest things upset you, or you got a fright?

There is no shame in this, and it’s rare we would tell a child to ‘harden up’ (at least, we shouldn’t!) - yet the same graciousness is not extended into adulthood. Though we still need reassurance and care, we have to learn to seek it in less bare ways as adults. Our wounds, however slight, still deserve tending. Sometimes it’s something we can attend to ourselves, with therapy or prayer, meditating on Christ, counselling, time, medication or fellowship.

There are those of us on the other end of the sliding scale, however. Like the ones mentioned in this scripture - who suffer wounds so deep, so fetid, so hardcore - we don’t have the ways or means to address them. They fester and fizzle under the slapstick bandages we create, and we say, ‘She’ll be right.’

We might say to others with similar wounds to our own - ‘She’ll be right.’ But more often than not, ‘she won’t be right.’

Jesus wants us to come to him to receive full healing. Those wounds you’ve dealt with privately that keep cropping up? Jesus wants to take that, bind it well, and see it loosed from you. That wound in the secret cupboard you can’t bear to bring in the light of day?

Jesus himself quoted the prophet Isaiah in Luke 4:14-19. Here are Isaiah’s words:

'The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord to display his splendour. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.' (Isaiah 61:1-4 NIV)

Prayer: Jesus, heal me where you’ve wounded me for pruning. Heal me where others and the enemy have wounded me for evil. Heal me where the world has carelessly discarded me. Let me know your healing oils and water.

Action: Write ‘WOUND’ down a page as an acrostic poem. Fill it in with a reflection from this week.