Binding Wounds | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Binding Wounds | Previous Challenge Entry
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10/21/06
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While on a mission trip in India a boy with a wounded hand was brought to me. “He did this an hour ago, it looks very bad. Can you do something?” asked the director of the Vacation Bible School we were conducting. I had helped with the medical team while on the trip--but only as a dental assistant. I took the boy’s hand and cringed as I tried to look past the dirt, blood and pus to assess his wound. He had a four inch gash that was clearly infected, not a fresh wound. When questioned, with much effort from an interpreter with very little English, the boy confessed that it actually had happened a week ago from falling off a motorbike. Taking him aside and cleaning the wound I could see there had been a very poor attempt at suturing done. The wound was wide open and festering.

A member of the church where we were working came over to interpret and accused the boy of lying; stating that he really had cut his hand trying to sneak onto someone’s property. Many of the walls surrounding property in Chennai are topped with shards of glass to keep out thieves. The gash was certainly more likely from that and was probably why the boy was avoiding treatment. This boy needed proper medical care; did it matter how he hurt himself? He was hurt and he needed help. After emphasizing this to our interpreter he finally changed focus from the how and the sin to the wound and the wounded. He helped me convey to the boy the seriousness of the infection: that the boy could lose his hand or it could make his heart very sick, and that he needed antibiotics and for the wound to be sutured properly. The interpreter, however, kept insisting that I do it! Trying not to turn whiter than I was already, I fervently explained that an actual doctor needed to open up the wound, clean it out really well and then sew it up right. All I could do was clean it externally, dab ointment on it and cover it to keep it from getting more dirt in it.

Afterwards I felt like God was showing me an illustration of what He’d done in my life. My life was like that ugly festering wound before I came to Jesus and trusted Him enough to allow Him to open up the painful truth of my life, cleanse me and purify me by washing me in His grace, then mending me, restoring me to live a new life in Him. In shame, I too tried to hide how damaged I was. Out of fear, I too was reluctant to trust. Would it be worse for me if God knew the truth? Would God punish me about the how, about the sin? Or would he love me so much that he’d just want me healed and restored to Him. How blessed to discover that it was not about the how of the sin or the the what of the wound but it was all about the who of the Savior!

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits- who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion. Psalm 103:2-4

I know from years of experience the futility of trying to make myself clean from the outside, the uselessness of trying to cover brokenness with a bandage. Only the Great Physician himself could lay open my heart, release the grip sin had on me and immerse me in the truth of Christ Jesus.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:3

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