The other day I was trying to expand my running, and so I ran on a trail recommended to me. That trail was Echo Valley Road, which I learned is one of the rockiest trails on the planet. Not good for a barefoot runner.
By the end of the "run," I was hurting. Not only have my feet been beat up for days, but my knees were hurting for a day. That bothered me, since barefoot running is supposed to be easier on the knees. What it turned out to be is that I started running with terrible form, allowing for a ton of lateral movement in my knees in order to dodge the larger rocks. I could hardly walk the next day. In other words, my hurt created my bad form.
A couple Sundays ago, we visited the idea that human beings were designed to live in certain kinds of ways. Sin is what we call it when we operate outside of those ways, hurting ourselves and others. But where does bad form come from?
Bad form comes from being hurt, or wounded. As human beings post-Genesis 3, we are all born wounded. We are born with the inherent desire to get our needs met, and sin corrupts that desire to aim for less than what we were designed for. Also, people we meet deepen the wounds and we find ourselves living further and further out of our woundedness.
Sometimes we skip the idea of woundedness, skipping to the instructions on how to stop doing bad things. And those instructions are good- we need them, just as a runner needs to be instructed on how to run and run well. But let's not skip the first part.
We need a healer. We need someone who is going to make us whole and get us back to walking before we can re-learn how to run. The Greek word for salvation is the same as the word for healing.
Jesus tells a parable to the Pharisees about a lost sheep, and how He will go after the lost sheep. What sometimes gets missed is how a sheep gets lost in the first place. Sheep may be dumb, but they are always together. It's why we use the term "sheep" to describe a mob that can't think for itself. The only reason a sheep would get lost and lonely is because it is hurt.
Jesus is the great healer. And today, I am grateful.
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