Wounds

 “So we must let go of every wound that has pierced us.”  Hebrews 12:1, The Passion Translation.

The word translated as wound can also be translated “arrow tip”.  An enemy shoots his arrows at me, and I’m left walking around carrying an arrow tip that has broken off inside my body, constantly nagging me with painful throbbing, reminding me of the wound.

But Jesus says “we must let go of every wound”.  

Sometimes I find myself actually protecting the wound, like I don’t want to let it go.  I shield it, cover it with a pretty bandage, and hold it close. 

Maybe I believe I deserve to hurt.  I deserve to suffer a while.  Or I use the hurt as a defense mechanism to keep myself isolated from more potential wounding. 

The wound is actually familiar to me.  I’m so used to it that I may start to believe it’s part of me, instead of a foreign object that was placed in me by someone who wasn’t out to do me any good. 

Sometimes I just allow myself to sink into the grief and let it engulf me.  I’ve been here so long anyway that grief sometimes feels more comfortable than imagining what life would look like without the wound.

How do I heal from that?  

I have to allow Father God to remove the arrow tip so the throbbing pain stops. I have to let it go. I have to realize the truth:  That arrow tip is not mine. It’s not part of me.  It’s actually a foreign object and the fact that I’ve allowed it to stay in place a long as I have is that I’ve been believing a lie.

The arrow tip is still in there.  I have to choose:  Will I continue to protect the wound, keep it in place? Allow the wound to keep me where I am, in defense mode.  “Just let me hold it a little longer.  Maybe I deserve to hurt.”

Or, I can choose to let it go, ask you, Father God to extract the arrow tip.  “Please be gentle – will it hurt much?”

Your hand slips inside the wound – you know right where it is.  You remove the arrow tip and I immediately begin to feel the relief of its absence.

Then you take the arrow tip into your own body, and by your wounds, Jesus, I am healed.  For you are a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.  I was never meant to keep the arrow tip inside me. It was always your plan to carry it for me. 

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 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 53:3-5.