He Heals the Broken-hearted

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 40:21-31 and Psalm 147:1-12, 21c.

One of the problems with superheroes is that their powers are used as weapons. So their stories usually boil down to they and their enemies hitting each other or blasting each other with beams of energy. It's just World Federation Wrestling with magic. And the good guys fight better and win, so we cheer. Which made Joss Whedon's second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, different. While the most powerful heroes were doing the bulk of the fighting, the others saved the people of the city from the destruction. It was a nice contrast to Man of Steel where Superman and his Kryptonian adversary destroyed a good deal of Metropolis as they fought. Subsequently in the Justice League movie, originally directed by Whedon, Superman and the Flash spent much of their time moving noncombatants out of harm's way. They not only killed bad guys but saved lives.

But then I watched a documentary called After Hitler. Unlike most of these World War 2 documentaries, it did not focus on the Nazis or even the fighting but the aftermath of the war in Europe. It emphasized the huge problems that the war had created. Germany was largely populated by women, children and the elderly. 5 ½ million German men had died in the war. 9 million Axis soldiers were held by the allies as prisoners of war. So it was the women who were clearing up the rubble that covered what once were thriving cities. The children, more than a million of whom were orphans, scrambled over and through the ruins looking for food or anything that could be traded for food. Women sold their bodies to survive. Jewish inmates liberated from the concentration camps were too weak to leave. Thousands of them continued to die, some because they could not digest the better food the relief agencies were serving. 40 million displaced people became refugees, traveling the length and width of the continent to get back to their homes and countries, often to find their towns destroyed and their relatives dead. Rape and abuse and divorce and suicide rates soared. The pain and suffering doesn't stop once the bad guys are defeated. Bodies, minds and whole communities are broken. They don't show that in the movies. Instead the heroes fly off into the sunset or go out and eat shawarma.

The book of Lamentations gives us a similar horrifying picture of the fall of Jerusalem. “Because of thirst the infant's tongue sticks to the roof of its mouth; the children beg for bread, but no one gives it to them....Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of famine; racked with hunger, they waste away for lack of food from the field.” (Lamentations 4:4, 9) It describes cannibalism and roaming bands of violent men. (verses 10, 18) And then, after the siege ends and the walls fall, the people are taken into exile to live in a foreign land with a new language and customs. They will not return home for 70 years. A society broken like that does not heal spontaneously.

Today's psalm depicts God not as the Lord of hosts or as a warrior but as someone who rebuilds Jerusalem and heals its inhabitants. “He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.” He not only heals their physical wounds but their psychological ones as well. God is concerned with the health of the whole person: body, mind and spirit.

We have come a long way in healing what's physically broken. For 61 years, I never broke a bone in my body. And then, in a few seconds, I broke a record number of them and tore up a bunch of internal organs. And the doctors fixed most of them. All except my right heel and ankle, which they figured would pain me regardless of what they did. And they were right. I now have more metal in my skeleton than Wolverine. But I can walk again. Most everything works as it should. Though when the weather changes, the once broken parts give me a role call, each one announcing itself with a twinge or a jab or an ache.

Oddly enough, mentally I think I have suffered more in this past year than I did during my recovery. True, I had a bad time when, discharged from the rehab center and back at home, my new physical therapist evaluated me and said I was still 70% disabled. 100 days learning to walk and take care of myself again and I had only made 30% progress! But I had an end in sight, a positive goal: to get better. And I realized that, with his help, I could make it.

This period we are going through now, having to stay isolated and even when together not being able to touch or even get close, is psychologically harder. We can only visit distant family and friends in little windows on screens, a sterile kind of interaction for physical beings. Worse, our dying breathe their last sealed off from loved ones and even from skin contact, attended only by masked strangers, who can only touch them with gloved hands. All deaths are lonely these days.

Rather than a clear end date and milestones of progress we can tick off, we look at the numbers of new infections and the daily death toll. Our plan for achieving normality is the same as when this began: just keep wearing masks and keep our distance. Oh, and try to find some place where we can get vaccinated. There is light at the end of the tunnel, provided you can get on a list and get a date and a location. But even then, until 70% or more of the people around us get vaccinated, the old rules remain in place. And unfortunately not everyone has the same goal: the healing of all by everyone doing their part and getting vaccinated.

So how can God help us during periods of extended suffering, when nothing seems to change or at least not by much and not very quickly?

First of all by our shifting our perception and looking at him and to him. Our psalm says, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; there is no limit to his wisdom.” We do tend to look first and foremost at God's power. He is the creator of heaven and earth. Nothing is too hard for him. That's encouraging.

But power without wisdom is scary. Look at the people who have wild predators as pets. During the first part of this pandemic, many of us were enthralled by the lunacy of the people documented in the series Tiger King. We saw numerous video clips of people hugging and playing with apex predators. We also saw people who lost limbs and possibly at least one life to them. The beasts do not think like we do and their powerful instincts can take over. And the people who forget this display a distinct lack of wisdom.

God is wiser than us and sometimes we forget this. There is a great illustration of this that I have been studying. This week I am wrapping up the book of Genesis on Facebook Live. I have been reading the story of Joseph. Because of his dreams of his brothers bowing down to him, they wanted to kill him but they settle for selling him into slavery. He does well at this though, eventually running his Egyptian master's household. But then he is falsely accused of rape and thrown into prison. He is made chief trusty and while he is there he meets two Egyptian officials who have bizarre dreams. He interprets their dreams and tells the one who will be reinstated with Pharaoh to put in a good word for him. Unfortunately, the man forgets until 2 years later when Pharaoh has weird dreams. The man then remembers and recommends Joseph as interpreter. Joseph not only tells Pharaoh what his dreams mean—7 years of bumper crops followed by 7 years of bupkis—but perhaps from his years of being a good steward, he has a smart plan for how to get through the years of famine. So Pharaoh puts him in charge of collecting, storing and distributing the surplus grain. Later when his brothers go to Egypt to buy food during the famine, Joseph, after testing to see if they've changed, reveals himself to them. They are frightened of what he, the second in command of Egypt, will do to them. But he says, “Now, do not be upset and do not be angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me ahead of you to preserve life!” (Genesis 45:5) I'm sure Joseph didn't feel that way during his years as a slave or as a prisoner. But 9 years as the person in charge of food reserves for the known world has made him reassess his life and shift his perspective on what God was doing with him.

Sometimes you can only see God's hand at work in your life by looking back at how you got where you are. Paul said, “And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose...” (Romans 8:28) We need to trust in God's love and put our hope in him and in the purpose he has for us. Years of suffering took on a different look when Joseph saw how God got him to Egypt, into the service of a high official, and therefore able to be imprisoned with other high officials, and at the proper time being of service to Pharaoh and averting widespread starvation by using the gifts God gave him and the skills he acquired over more than decade of hardship. God giving us hope and a sense of meaning and purpose goes a long way toward healing a broken heart and trauma.

“The Lord lifts up the lowly but casts the wicked to the ground.” The Jewish Publication Society's Tanakh translation renders this “The Lord gives courage to the lowly...” Other translations use the words “sustains,” “supports,” “helps,” and “relieves.” The Hebrew can also mean “restores.” Young's Literal Translation says that God “is causing the meek to stand.” The basic meaning is that God gives the humble what they need to get on their feet and do what they need to do to live the life he offers. Hope, meaning, purpose, courage and the fact that God is there to help sustains and supports us.

One of the odd things about the story of Joseph is that nowhere does God speak directly to him as he did to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob his father. Yet Joseph is guided by a sense that God is working through his circumstances. Joseph first mentions God when his master Potiphar's wife comes on to him. “My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9) Mind you, his belief in God has not stopped him from being sold into slavery by his brothers. But rather than give up faith in God his circumstances have strengthened it. And rather than say to himself, “I am stuck here as a slave. Why not enjoy sex with this woman?” his faith in God gives Joseph the moral courage to stay true to the behavior he knows God desires of him.

His refusal of her gets him accused of attempted rape anyway and he gets thrown in prison. Yet he does not despair. He becomes chief trusty and when confronted by 2 men with dreams, he doesn't take credit for his ability to interpret them but says, “Do not interpretations come from God?” And after 2 years of waiting for Pharaoh's cupbearer to remember him and put in a word for him, Joseph still has not given up on God. When Pharaoh gets him out of prison and says he heard that Joseph can interpret dreams, Joseph says, “I cannot do it, but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.”(Genesis 41:16) Eventually he is able to say to his brothers, “So then, it was not you who sent me here but God.” (Genesis 45:8) And “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20)

You cannot tell me that during the 13 years that Joseph was a slave and then a prisoner, he did not have times when he was tempted to give up, when he felt that maybe God had given up on him. But he kept the flame of his faith burning. He knew that God would come through. He believed that the dreams he had when he was 17 would be fulfilled.

It is interesting that at age 17 Florence Nightingale also felt called by God to dedicate her life to the service of others. That helped her get through the years of opposition by her family to taking up such a then low-class profession, and the obstruction by military officials of her efforts to save the lives of wounded soldiers, and the illness that had her bed-bound and in pain for much of the rest of her life. She never gave up on promoting and improving nursing. And she never lost her faith in God and Christ. Once Florence was tending to a young prostitute who was dying and afraid she would go to hell. She said to Nightingale, “Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time.” Florence replied, “Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to? Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was or can ever imagine.”

And that is another way that God heals the broken-hearted and binds their wounds and restores the humble—through us. Through people like Florence Nightingale, who used her compassion and her math and organizational skills. Through people like Joseph who rescued Egypt in much the same way that the Marshall Plan rescued war-devastated Europe. And through ordinary Christians like you and me. Neither Florence nor Joseph had superpowers. Joseph realized the power wasn't in him but in God, who worked through him. He and Florence just used what God gave them to do what God called them to do. What gifts and skills has God given you?

One thing we all have is the Spirit, God in us. God is love and he pours that love into our hearts through his Spirit, enabling us to be conduits of his love and grace and mercy. (Romans 5:5) He calls us to do the same works he does, saving and healing lives. (John 14:12) He calls us to help the poor and the hungry and the sick and the imprisoned and the excluded. (Matthew 25:34-40) And in fact often in healing others' hearts, we find healing for our own.

The more we rely on God, the more we feel his support, his power to restore us and sustain us. His wisdom sustains us. His hope sustains us. His love sustains us. As our passage from Isaiah says, “He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”