wounded.

I've been a horrible blogger lately.  There've been about a jillion thoughts in my head, but not very many minutes to really be quiet with them.

Last Sunday, Chip started a new series at River Hills that began with one of the strongest, most applicable sermons I've ever heard. 

The series is called Wounded and it came out of the tough last few months he and Sarah Beth have lived through... just further proof that we speak most powerfully when we speak out of what God has been teaching us most recently and most powerfully.

I can't imagine that the idea of being wounded doesn't touch every single person.  I am pretty sure that there were very few dry eyes at the end of that service when Elissa stood to close the service with Laura Story's Blessings.

I suppose being wounded is part of living in a sinful, fallen world.  We are wounded physically by death and disease.  We are wounded emotionally by unhealthy relationships, betrayals, rejection.  We are hurt by our families and by those who are most supposed to love and support us.  We are hurt by total strangers.  We carry around a suitcase full of past mistakes, failures, rejections, wounds. 

Chip started the journey in an unlikely place.  Mark 5.

It's the account of Jairus coming to Jesus and asking him to heal his little girl.  Actually, it says Jairus BEGGED Jesus and Jesus immediately left with him.  Except ...

along the way as He made His way through the crowds, He was touched by the woman with the "issue of blood" ... and she, was just as desperate as Jairus for a touch from Jesus, but not as bold as to approach Him.  Afterall, she was considered unclean, an outcast and now destitute from spending all of her money seeing doctors who had been unable to heal her.

I know this kind of desperation.  We've all prayed it for someone we love ravaged by cancer or disease.  I've lived it these past few months, with Gavin, having seen doctor after doctor and still no one could help him.  The worst thing he would hear was "your tests were normal."

Wounded, she was. Wounded, he was.  And then, there was Jesus.

In the midst of the woman being healed, word came that it was too late, Jairus's daughter had died.  Been there, too.  Haven't you?  Begging God to move, seeing Him get closer and then, boom ... whatever it was we had been begging Him for, doesn't happen.  Kind of makes you wonder what Jairus was like on that journey.  Was he like Martha, thinking/saying, "If you had come, my daughter would not be dead?"  Jesus did not meet His expectations.  He didn't operate on his timetable.

On a side note, as I've been reading The Circle Maker, I've been thinking alot about that.  Seems like Jesus OFTEN anwers our prayers at JUST the time that His glory is made known ... NOT when our comfort is begging for relief.  Chip said:

Grace rarely operates on our schedule. 

And do you know why grace rarely operates on our schedule?  Because God's grace make dead people alive.  It doesn't just make wounded people better.  It makes the helpless, hopeful.

So often, through no fault of our own, we are wounded.  Maybe ... if we'd screwed up, it'd make sense.  Maybe, if we were bad, we'd "deserve it"  But like Jairus, we are doing EVERYTHING we could do, right.  Also like Uriah.  My friend, Joanna told me this week, that their sermon last week was on the life of Uriah ... yeh, the guy who was a faithful husband and a dutiful soldier, off serving where He was supposed to be while his whole life was falling apart and eventually ending.  Both Uriah and Jairus ... and the woman, none of them did anything to cause the pain they were experiencing, it just happened.  They did not deserve it.  But neither do any of us deserve God's grace.  But we receive it. 

We are justice-minded, grace-craving people who have to come to realize that the gospel is enough. (CW).  His grace is sufficient.  His strength is made perfect in our weakness.  He is not uncaring or too late.  And HE is enough.

Can't wait for tomorrow.  I love my church ... worshipping with people I love, hearing truth from a pastor who lives it and who loves his flock and who is willing to be open and transparent about what God is doing.