“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
– Isaiah 53:4,5
You and I serve a suffering God. We serve, as Henri Nouwen said, a wounded healer. And that is exactly what we are called to be. You see, God became human like us; He was crushed on the cross. He shared in our sufferings so that we could share in His healing. He shared in our death so that we could share in His life. You do not have to be perfect, you do not have to be sinless, you do not have to be high and mighty and you do not even have to read the Bible all the way through. Even if you don’t go to church or feel like a good Christian, you can be the kind of person who is a warm, compassionate, healing presence to those that are in your life. Like Jesus, our suffering can transform us into deeper and more caring people, and that’s good news! |
Prayer
God, thank you for using my suffering to make me a blessing to those around me.
Reflection
How can the pain and suffering you have gone through make you into a better person?
4 Responses
I love the late Henri Nouwen!
Hi Bobby,
Although Jesus Christ is our Lord and Saviour, I don’t think He is God. Son of God yes, God the Son no. Big difference.
Numbers 23:19 (NASB) says that “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent;…”. Well to state the obvious, Jesus is and/or was a man and a son of man.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God not God Himself.
1 Timothy 6:17 says that God alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. Again to state the obvious, this can’t be speaking about Jesus because Jesus has been seen!
The pain and suffering that I went through make me much more closer to GOD and to the Word of GOD as well!
Like!