Devotionals/Sunday Psalms – Page 8

Trauma Thoughts

My husband’s cancer, diagnosed in 2009 and treated over the next two years, did not traumatize me.

“What do you mean by that,” you might ask. “Wasn’t it intense and scary and didn’t you cry?”

Yes, yes, and yes. But genuine trauma overwhelms our coping abilities and leaves unprocessed feelings stuffed away. We walk away from trauma with anger and pain and fear that are tucked away in the closet of the back bedroom, split off from the physical memory of the event. If we want to live an emotionally healthy life, we must eventually clean out that closet. The memories and the feelings need to be reintegrated into a whole experience. Lies need to be identified and disavowed. God’s truth needs to be experienced. Until the healing happens, the memory of the difficult event feels like it happened yesterday.

No memory-from getting Jerry’s diagnosis to the last PSA test-feels that fresh. It was intense and I was scared and I cried a fair amount. When the first surgery had to be stopped because Jerry would have died from a life-threatening reaction to the anesthesia, I trembled for an hour as my friend Judy and I prayed. I lost some sleep and I ate too much. But on the whole, I stayed in touch with my emotions through it all. No memory brings up any pain.

That’s how we know we need healing–when a memory throws us back into an emotional fire. When stuffed-down memories do flash through our minds, we feel like we are right there again.

If that’s your experience, perhaps it is time to ask Jesus, “How do I heal this memory? What do you want to do with this fragmented piece of my heart?” Take the time to ask him to go with you to the old memories and show you where he was. Ask him what his perspective is on that trauma. Find a safe person to process the pain with.

Though the cancer process was not traumatic, childhood abuse had left my heart fragmented for years, so I know what those intrusive memories and feelings are like. Perhaps you are one of the many who walk around with a traumatized heart. May I pray for you?

Father, you know the fresh pain that comes every time that memory comes up. Please show me how to heal. What people, what resources, what kinds of interactions with you do I need? Give me grace to face what must be faced. If it was easy, I’d have done it before. I need your help. For your glory, Amen.

God’s Context

Sold by his jealous brothers into Egyptian slavery, jailed on false rape charges, and forgotten by one who could help, Joseph, favored son of Isaac, absorbed the suffering. He let that suffering humble his heart. In humility, he accepted that his story is a small part of a God-sized story.

After years in jail, God placed him second in power to the Pharaoh. When his brothers came to him to buy grain in a long famine, he could have refused. But humility allowed grace: “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.” Genesis 45:5

Rather than assert his rights to liberty and a pursuit of happiness, Joseph was willing to step outside his own story and see himself from a God’s-eye-view. In that view, his pain furthered God’s purpose.

In a culture addicted to complaining (I’m guilty), we need a Joseph kind of humble wisdom. A wisdom that looks at the largest possible context, the eternal context, before making a final judgement about our own injustices.

Our pain is important and must be taken seriously. It must also be put in the context of the eternal story, lest it overwhelm us. Only then will we be able to give the grace Joseph gave to his brothers.

What part of your story do you need to put into God’s context?

Wisdom, objectivity, humility. Father, we need you to grow these fruits in our hearts. For your glory. Amen.

Why Jesus?

Ravi Zacharias, speaking of his new book, Why Jesus? says, “It’s the unpaid bill of the church. We never really cared for what people were feeling, what they were struggling with. We were speaking our platitudes into a vacuum.”

Into that spiritual vacuum, the new spirituality has rushed. It’s a spirituality that deifies human intuition, without regard for objective truth, reality that resides outside our own perception. In that vein, Ravi’s first title for Why Jesus? was From Oprah to Chopra.

I respect Dr. Zacharias as a thinker, apologist, and cultural commentator. I’ve listened to his radio program regularly and appreciate his respect of other views, without sarcasm. He gently, pointedly, incisively, points out the world-view issues of non-Christian perspectives on truth and reality. Because of that respect, though I’ve only browsed it, I’m recommending this book today.

The quote from the interview referenced above illustrates his clear thinking and perspective. In this book he may not address meeting people’s emotional needs, but it’s clear he grasps that Christianity is not just intellectual assent to doctrine, but also experiencing God in emotionally real ways.

It’s that desire to experience the transcendent that has led many into deceptive practices that reject sound doctrine. We are not gods or goddesses nor will we ever be God. There is one trinitarian God–creator, redeemer, and sustainer. He seeks to adopt each one of us into his forever family and to grow us into the image of Jesus. May none of us be taken “captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” Colossians 2:8

Father, may you anoint this book to speak to those who seek transcendence. May your truth be revealed to every searching heart. For your glory, Amen.