What you are looking at here is the result of a valve wrench slipping and introducing my finger to an adjacent valve stem. Man did it hurt. I could see the top of the dark spot showing immediately at the base of my nail. The picture you see here is 4 months later. Sometimes we have things that happen to us that may not leave a visible scar, but they may leave hidden damage underneath for a long time. We may forget about them from time to time. Then something reminds us of it. We may have thought that we got over it, but there it is staring us in the face. Or maybe you’ve looked at it everyday just as I did my injured nail. You may have guarded it because it was too painful to deal with at first, but now you’ve gotten used to it. You haven’t healed, you’ve just learned to deal with it. Learning to just deal with something isn’t healing, it’s just masking.
There’s a story in Genesis that you’ll miss if you just read over it as genealogy.
Genesis 11:26-32 KJV
26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. 27 Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
29 And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
30 But Sarai was barren; she had no child.
31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.
32 And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
Terah had gathered his family to go to Canaan. We come to learn later that Canaan is the Promised Land. Maybe Terah felt a spiritual drawing to Canaan. Maybe God had directed him to go. For whatever reason he was headed to Canaan.
Terah though stopped short. Why didn’t he go to where he was supposed to arrive? I think the reason lies in the name of where he stopped. Haran is the place that he stopped. Haran was also the name of Terahs’s son that passed away. Terah had never healed from losing his son. He may have buried the pain and decided to move on and help his family move on. Then he stops at Haran. He runs into a roadblock that causes him to face this buried pain. This is where Terah stopped; this is where he died. He never made it to Canaan.
Maybe Terah was like Jacob in Genesis 37:35 KJV he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.
He could not find a place of healing. Often people feel like healing is like betraying their loved one. I remember after my Daddy had passed away I drove his old truck for a while. It started going down and giving me trouble. I didn’t want to get rid of it because it was my Daddy’s. A friend told me, “Your Daddy would want you to drive a reliable vehicle.” This was true and your family members would want you to heal. It’s not betraying them to heal. Wouldn’t you want your loved ones to heal after you pass away? Of course you do. So did they.
It says in Colossal 3:15 KJV And let the peace of God rule in your hearts… Notice it says “let peace,” we have to let the peace of God rule. Yes, that means we can refuse it. We can hold onto our hurt and carry it to our graves with us. That is not what God wants for us and it’s not what our loved ones would want for us.
Maybe what you need healing from isn’t the loss of a loved one. Maybe someone hurt you, maybe they betrayed you. Maybe it happened years ago and you thought you had healed, but you haven’t. Whatever the source of your pain, Jesus can heal you and put you back together. Bring your broken heart to Jesus and let Him heal you, let Him fix you and make you whole again.
Psalm 147:3 KJV He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
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