Fin Sheridan
“Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal. From six calamities he will rescue you; in seven no harm will touch you. In famine he will deliver you from death, and in battle from the stroke of the sword. Job 5:17-20
I’ve got a friend. He’s a young guy, about 16 years old. My friend had to have a 7 hour operation recently and as part of that operation, the surgeons had to break his bones in order to reset them.
It sounds counter-productive doesn’t it? Shattering or breaking something in order to heal it. And yet, that is exactly what today’s verses tell us that God does. As part of his love and guidance for us, there are moments when he wounds us. When he shatters us.
We read in Proverbs 3 that God disciplines those that he loves. That discipline may feel more real, more painful even, then we’d imagined BUT it is also way more loving than we know. The surgeons, in order to truly help my friend, have to break the bones. They have to use a knife, to make an incision. There is some blood. Take a snapshot of those moments and it looks brutal. Look at the whole picture and we can see they are doing the most loving thing for him. My friend is more alive, because those things happened.
That’s the imagery we have here. God wounding, but then binding up; God shattering, but his hands healing. Without the latter part, God seems cruel. But our great Physician is not cruel nor is he unintentional. Every incision, every cut, every moment of suffering, is carefully orchestrated and allowed to happen because of his great kindness and mercy towards us. It’s for our good; he’s making us more like Jesus. He’s forming in us the character and person we were designed to become and because we are sin-sick, that often looks messy. The question we have to answer in our hearts though is this: do we trust his heart?