The Next Step in The Healing Journey
I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten… Never again will my people be shamed.
- Joel 2:25, 26
In yesterday’s devotional we looked at taking an initial step towards healing by assessing what is broken. Today we’re going think about a next step in the healing process.
The prophet Joel uses the image of a locust swarm to portray the shame and brokenness the people of Israel experienced in his day. These huge locust swarms would come and eat an entire year’s worth of crops, devastating a community. And notice that it was years of loss to the locusts. For many of us, the deep healing that we need in our lives is from the many years we’ve suffered under oppression, whether external or internal. For many of us there’s been abuse, and not just the acts of abuse themselves, but the associated mantras that then get repeated in our souls about us not being worthy of love, of us being a mistake, of us being damaged goods.
Jesus came to break the power of those curses, to end the shame, and also to dismantle the systems that cause brokenness. This process is most often years long, because, just like the harvests that the locusts destroyed could not be repaired in a day or even a month, our hearts and our world need a long time to heal.
One of the vey simple (yet powerful) things that Jesus often does in this healing process is to help us reimagine who we are. He wakens our hearts and minds to listen to mantras that are different than the curses we’ve internalized. To break us free from the negativity, he uses the power of blessing to slowly shape our souls to be well, to embrace our belovedness.
Tomorrow we’ll think more about some of the practical steps towards interiorizing what God says about you. Today, the goal is to embrace the journey.
Today, Jesus is asking you the question that he asked back in his ministry in first century Palestine of a man who couldn’t walk: “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:5). The first step for the man took only an instant, but no doubt the deep healing of his heart took years. What will you say to Jesus as he is asking you, “Do you want to get well?”