Wounded Healer

A few years ago my wife had a routine, outpatient gall bladder surgery that turned into a medical nightmare. She almost died, had multiple surgeries, spent a month in the hospital, and ended up with a wound the length of her abdomen that I dressed every day for months. It would not heal no matter what we did.

Finally we were referred to the top plastic surgeon in our HMO. He performed a complicated procedure to excise the tissue that wouldn’t heal and move muscles around, closing her wound for the last time. It worked, thank God.

Before our first appointment with the surgeon, our regular doctor made this off-hand comment: he’s a great surgeon. By the way, he has Tourette's Syndrome.

In case you don’t know what Tourette’s is, here’s an internet definition from the National Library of Medicine: a condition that causes people to make repeated, quick movements or sounds that they cannot control. Having a surgeon who might have “repeated, quick movements” he cannot control made us nervous. Yet he’s the doctor who executed the delicate surgery that finally allowed my wife’s body to heal.

All of us who serve Christ are wounded healers. We have broken hearts, but we comfort grieving people. We struggle with doubts, but teach the trustworthiness of God’s word. We fight fear, but we en-courage. We still sin, but we try to model purity.

For some reason the Lord is pleased to display His strength in weak, unremarkable people. He reveals His wisdom through foolish, unexceptional people. He delights to achieve His purposes through people whom others might pass by or disqualify. His reason? That all the glory will be His. Or as Paul said, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (1 Corinthians 1:29).  

Our “wounds” often trace back to our own sins and poor choices, or the sins and poor choices of others. But the real Wounded Healer is our Christ. All of His wounds were because of sin, but not His own. Our hope and healing, our joy and peace, our forgiveness and faith, all come from those wounds.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 1 Peter 2:24.

It is often in our weakness and fear and pain and brokenness that we meet Christ in His comfort and kindness, and find Him strong to save. It is only in the comfort of His wounds, and His triumph for us, that we bring any healing to others. It makes me appreciate Augustus Toplady's old hymn, written 250 years ago. He surely got it right, to the glory and admiration of Jesus, our Wounded Healer.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me pure.