Come, ye disconsolate where’er ye languish
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel
Here bring your wounded heart
Here tell of your anguish
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
Boy, I am so glad for this hymn, I love to sing it when I feel like God is bending me – never breaking, but bending. That’s a lesson I learned very early on in my paralysis. Never would I have dreamed I could live in a wheelchair, much less smile in it, but what I learned is that if I’m being bent by God, He will never push me to the breaking point. It’s like that verse in Isaiah 42:3, “A bruised reed he will not break...”
What helped me discover this during those early days of my injury was this poem someone sent me. This is how it goes:
When God wants to drill a man, and thrill a man and skill a man,
When God wants to mold a man to play the noblest part,
When He yearns with all His heart to create so great and bold a man
That all the world should be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways:
How God ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects;
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him into shapes and forms of clay
Which only God can understand,
While man’s tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands;
Yet God bends but never breaks when man’s good He undertakes;
O, how He uses whom He chooses,
And with mighty power infuses him,
With every act induces him to try His splendor out,
God knows what He’s about.
If I love God, I mean, really love him, really trust him, then suffering does not ultimately matter, it is Christ in me is what matters. Pain does not cease to be pain, but I can “rejoice in suffering” because the power of God in my life is greater than suffering’s vice-grip can ever possibly be. As Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limits; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.” God’s power in your life is greater than suffering’s grip can ever be. Oh, may God help you to believe it today. Better yet, may He help you to live it.
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
P.O. Box 3333
Agoura Hills, CA 93176
© Joni and Friends