Hope

Bruised, Broken or Shattered?

Valerie Cullers 20 Comments

Many times in life, we find ourselves in pain. Something has happened to us and we must deal with the consequences of it. We may have caused the pain to ourselves or someone else may have done it. Either way, we need help. We need Someone who can take the pain away and heal us.

Lots of things can knock us around in life. Circumstances, the loss of a job, a best friend moving away, or some other life changing situation comes crashing into our life. We feel bruised; others may not see it but we feel it just the same. We are hurting. No, we are not bleeding on the outside but our spirit has been bruised. Is there Someone we can go to, Someone who cares? When describing Jesus in the Scriptures we read, “A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench; He will bring forth justice for truth.” Isaiah 42:3 We can rest assured that when we come to Him with our hurts, He will help us. He will not rebuke us for our weakness or our pain.

What about when we have sustained a bone crushing injury? Something has happened to us that we cannot ignore or hide. Maybe we have lost a loved one or have been accused of something falsely. We need help and we need it badly. Can anyone come and splint our injury and help us while we go through a time of restoration? Again, in describing the work of the Lord we read that, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3 All we have to do is call out to Him when we need help and He will be there.

Is the Lord big enough to help us when we have suffered a soul crushing injury? We feel we have been run over by a steamroller and there is not much left of us. Perhaps our spouse has run off with another person. Perhaps the business we have spent a lifetime building has gone bankrupt. Perhaps a hurricane or other natural disaster has taken from us everything we own. Is the Lord big enough to help even when we go through our worst times? I’m talking about those times when we can hardly speak because of the pain we are in. We feel our life is over and there is nothing to be done. Can He help us even when our hearts are shattered? Jesus is talking about himself in Isaiah 61: 1-3, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” Yes, we can look to Him. Jesus is big enough to bring us through our soul crushing disaster, heal us from our heart shattering pain and give us new life again. We just have to ask.

The Eyes of Faith

Valerie Cullers 21 Comments

Have you ever been praying for someone and you only see them as they are? Maybe they are making a bunch of mistakes. Perhaps they are sabotaging themselves at every turn. Their behavior has made you think of them and react towards them in a certain way. We seem to be locked into seeing them in a negative light and we treat them accordingly.

Perhaps we need to take some time and think about how the Lord would like their lives to be. What would that look like? If we can come up with a positive picture of them in our minds, then perhaps we can pray for them that way. We would be seeing them with the Eyes of Faith. Faith that when God intervenes in their lives, their lives will look much different.

The amazing thing about this is that when we can do that, we begin to treat them differently. We begin to treat them with more respect and we are not so negative towards them. We speak to them about the possibilities in their lives and try to help them see a different future for themselves.

When they can see themselves in a different light, it helps to dispel their negative self-image and sometimes they can believe in themselves again. People who are caught in a negative cycle of behavior have lost hope for themselves and their actions may just become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Is there someone you need to begin to look at with the Eyes of Faith? I know there is in my sphere. Remember the Scriptures say, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” Hebrews 11:1 Let’s hope for the best and see those caught in a negative spiral with the Eyes of Faith. It just may help change their world.

Image by Daniel Hannah. Courtesy of Pixabay.

Grief

Valerie Cullers 26 Comments

Grief, like a blanket, envelopes the room. I lay awake in bed thinking about the relative that took his own life and wonder, “Why?” I think about his pain but mostly about the pain of those left behind: his sisters, his cousins, his niece and nephews. I hang on to hope. The hope that comes from the Lord knowing that He is with all of us at this time. I thank God for the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Comforter, who comforts us in our distress.

I am forever grateful that the Lord knows our pain and can heal even the most broken heart. How could we ever hope to survive without Him?

Image by Karen Nadine. Courtesy of Pixabay.

A Rorschach Test

Valerie Cullers 23 Comments

Life is like a Rorschach Test. It’s all in how you look at it. For decades, psychologists have given people Rorschach tests. They are shown an image of an inkblot and then tell the psychologist what they see. Everyone perceives them a little bit differently. Life is sort of like that.

Each day, we are confronted with a host of problems and different circumstances. How we navigate them is mostly determined by how we perceive them. For instance, let’s say a truck drove by your house and a small log fell off the back of it. At first you would get the log out of the street and place it on your sidewalk, hoping the truck would come back and pick it up. After a few days however, if it hadn’t been picked up, you would move it onto your property and decide what to do with it.

Some people would just see it as a problem and wonder how they could get rid of it. Others would see potential in the log. One might see it as a plant stand and place it by their front door and put a beautiful plant on it. A woodcarver may see the log and think he could sculpt an image from it. Someone else might think he could cut it up in rounds and make a design on a wall with the pieces. Another might view it as a source of firewood to warm his house. However, if you had a toothpick factory, you would look at that log for what it could yield; hundreds if not thousands of toothpicks. You would view each part of it as having potential. Very few people have the ability to see the log that way.

If only we could only see the problems that come our way with that kind of perspective. Every problem has the potential to help us with our character development and add something positive to our lives. Will we trust God with the problems we face and turn to Him for the answers or will we just gut them out and try to get rid of them? However we decide to face them will ultimately decide the amount of good we will gain as we walk through each one of them.

We all get a choice as to how we view our lives and the problems we face. And just like a Rorschach image, it’s all in our perspective.

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28

Image by Edith Luthil. Courtesy of Pixabay

Hanging on to Hope in a Broken World

Valerie Cullers 3 Comments

pexels-photo-357891.jpegSometimes when I watch the nightly news, I come away feeling a sense of hopelessness. The problems of this world seem so big that I wonder if there are enough people out there to help fix them. What can I, one person, do to make a difference and help add hope to a world that is in such short supply of it?

It seems that if we want to make a difference in the world, we must take action. We must find the problem that touches our heart the most and seek to help in that area. Sometimes we wonder if we would have to organize a solution to the problem, but most of the time someone has gone before us and there is a group of people already working in the area that concerns us.

If we are concerned about hunger, we can find many groups in our community trying to help solve the problem. There are food banks, soup kitchens, senior citizen centers and many church groups working tirelessly to help feed those in need.

Are we upset about the lack of literacy in our young people? Any school in our community would love to have a volunteer teach kids to read. And what about the silent problem, adult literacy? There are places we can volunteer and help an adult learn to read and write. Opening the world of books to an adult can be one of the most rewarding experiences we will ever have.

I know seeing the homeless on the street bothers each one of us. We can volunteer at our local rescue mission or homeless shelter and help give someone a hot meal and a place to sleep at night.

If we want to help kids rescued from sex trafficking, we must do a little digging to find where to help. Most of the organizations that help these precious kids are quietly working behind the scenes  to provide safe homes and counseling to help restore their bodies and their souls.

And let’s not forget to keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Someday he will return to earth to set things right. A time is coming when there will be no more death, crime, sickness, hunger or war. Nature will be redeemed and the lion will lay down with the lamb. There is always hope…let’s keep looking up and in the meantime do our best to give hope to others and we will find hope rising up in our own hearts.