I love what Dan Allender says in his book The Healing Path. He talks about going back into our stories and into the pain, but for a purpose. He says, “Why remember? Why return to the times that were so painful…? The answer is simple and often not compelling to the person in pain: because our past, especially our pain, holds the key to our future and to the joy set before us. Our past is a treasure map that, read well, can lead us to vast abundance.”
Michael Thompson says in his book, The Heart of a Warrior, “We don’t go back to the past to stay in it. We go back to honor our moments of loss, to grieve them, to acknowledge that they happened. They hurt. They mattered. And they need to be treated. We go back with God for our healing.”
The offer is healing. While it is true that our complete healing is going to take place when we are face to face with Jesus at the restoration of all things, the journey of healing begins now. It is available for us today.
Jesus’ very first words that he spoke publicly were these in Luke 4:17-19, 21 (JUB):
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are broken, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord… Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears.
This is for us today. This is why Jesus came. And C.S. Lewis, to top it off, says,
“God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been, more glorious than any unfallen race is.”
Adam and Eve had something pretty good in the garden that God placed them in, but there’s something deeper still for us through the work of Christ.
