Archive for purpose
Jesus, the Healer of Broken Hearts
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If we believe that God is purposeful in His actions, then how significant is the fact that the first words of the first message Jesus preached were, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because … He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted…”? (Luke 4:18-19)
Jesus came to heal broken hearts and not only as a side benefit; it’s one of his life purposes! That’s good news because all of us who are in this world have experienced the pain of having our hearts broken in one way or another. If we look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels, we find that he moves throughout his days interacting with humanity and healing broken hearts. That healing takes many expressions. Today I want to look at how Jesus healed the heart of a woman as recorded in John 4 and what that healing means for us now.
Let’s take a look at the story.
Jesus was exhausted from his long trip. He had gone to the city well to get a drink of water. However, what followed was not a chance happening at all because we are told that Jesus “needed” to go through the region of Samaria; he was compelled to do so.
Jews did not have anything to do with Samaritans in those days. Samaritans were considered half-breeds and unclean by Jewish tradition. Yet Jesus, a Jew, chose to go through the middle of Samaria instead of making the usual trip around the area as most Jews did in order to avoid the Samaritans.
The Power of Awakened Desire
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What do you think of when you think of the word “desire”?
My Bridge Over Troubled Waters
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In 1969, Paul Simon wrote a powerful song which he and Art Garfunkel recorded in 1970. The expression of Paul’s heart in the song conveys the message that he would be a friend when friends could not be found; that he, himself, would be a bridge over his friend’s troubled water.
I was so struck by this thought yesterday as I listened to a lovely lady share how she had endured so many difficult things, felt alone so often, but God had revealed to her through a prayer team at our church that He had been her bridge every time over those troubled waters. She had not, in fact, been alone. God was there.
How many times have we felt abandoned during our hard times? And truthfully, many people do abandon us, but one thing I have begun to ask God in the last couple of years is that He would show me where He was during dark moments in my past. I, too, find that He has been my bridge, and that often the way He has done that was through others as they became “bridges” for me to walk on. My heart was moved to write these thoughts…
The Bridge
I hear the water below me
The power of its rushing
Stirs the fear within me
Yet the other side
Beckons me to keep walking
This bridge under my feet
Gives me strength
Although it doesn’t completely
Take my fears away
A Time to Throw Away
Posted by: | CommentsA time to keep,
And a time to throw away; Ecclesiastes 3:6
Perhaps there is no time when I more identify with the writer of Ecclesiastes than when I clean out my refrigerator. ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” “What profit has a man (or woman) from all (their) labor in which they toil under the sun?”
I must confess I find it difficult to find fulfillment in menial household tasks such as cleaning out the frig. My soul cries out, “Surely life is more than this!” Yet at my house, cleaning out the frig falls onto the task list with my name on it.
So last week I accidentally found myself cleaning out the refrigerator. You know those moments. I pulled out something and threw it away. Then I took out some leftovers and gave them to Charlie, our beloved mutt. And suddenly, one thing led to another and I was doing it. Relentlessly tossing out everything that cluttered my frig.
I got so caught up in the experience that I began checking the expiration dates on my bottled dressings, peppers, pickles, you name it, I was on a mission to have the perfectly organized refrigerator and to get rid of everything old.
First of all, I must admit that I was haunted by the words I recently read in a magazine that reminded me that the most expensive part of our food budget was the foods that we threw away. Ouch. I really intended to eat that bit of leftovers. I meant to cook stuffed peppers but now they were, well, unstuffable.
