A Striking Experience

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rowing up on Main Street was a wonderful experience!  Everything I knew and learned about the world happened there.  I learned how to trust, I learned how to be honest, I learned the importance of sharing, and I learned how to get along with others.  Of course, there were the other lessons as well.  On Main Street I also learned that you don’t always get your way, that sometimes friends let you down, that life happens and it isn’t always pleasant, and that there are always consequences to the choices we make and they affect not only us but those we hold most dear.

My father’s place of business was located just up the street from our home. In fact, I could see it from our backyard and I passed it on my way to school, when I visited a friend, or when I went uptown.  What I remember most about its location are the two giant oak trees that stood on its property lines, one to the west and the other to the east. 

Those two trees were huge, standing like great pillars holding up the sky. I remember, as a kid, looking up at them, almost breaking by back as I bent tried to see their tops.  Putting your arms around them was as impossible a task as emptying the ocean with a bucket but I tried anyway on several occasions.  I was an eternal optimist!

Those trees are forever etched into my memory because they played such an important part in my childhood.   There were always there, in summer, in winter, in spring, in fall, in heat, in cold, in rain, in drought, and when the wind blew, they creaked and groaned, bending but never breaking. 

There was one day, however, when the impossible happened.  Lightening struck one of the trees and laid the bark open from the fork of its trunk where its branches began to the roots which entered the ground.  The gash was deep, ugly, and threatened to destroy the tree if it weren’t repaired.

I came home from school one day to find a tree surgeon repairing the damage left by that lightening bolt.  I remember my grandfather telling me the man in the bucket truck was a surgeon. I trusted my grandfather even though I found it odd that this surgeon had no nurse assisting him and didn’t wear green surgical scrubs like the doctors on TV. After a few hours, however, he had repaired the tree, filling the scar with some mixture that hardened, protecting the tree’s interior and removing any possibility that it would die from its wound.

He was a great tree surgeon!  In time the bark grew back around the wound.  The tree continued to bud and grow leaves year after year.  Eventually, it became impossible to tell that anything had happened to that tree but the fact remained it had been wounded and inside, down deep where you couldn’t see it, the surgeon’s work remained, forever changing the tree, giving it life in spite of its past wound.

Would it surprise you to know that the work of a tree surgeon is described in the book of Psalms?  It is amazing what we can find in the Scriptures when we take time to read them closely and let them speak to us.  In Psalm 147:3 David shares this thought, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” 

This passage speaks to all of us.  Who among us has not had a broken heart?  Who among us has been able to escape the lightening strikes of life?  We’ve all had our hearts broken and none of us has escaped life’s storms.  But God stands ready to heal our wounds and to make our hearts whole.  The greatest strike that rips into our lives is sin.  None of us is immune to it.  In fact, the Scriptures tell us very plainly that we have all sinned and fallen woefully short of God’s glory.  But that wound can be healed by accepting Jesus Christ as our savior and lord.  Only when we accept God’s free gift of salvation can the wound in our heart be truly healed.

God places His balm of love, mercy, and grace into our hearts.  He binds up the wound and heals us from our sin.  We are then able to live, truly live and produce fruit for His glory.  Even when our outsides look the same, we are forever changed on the inside because God works in our hearts, the very essence and core of our being.

It has become very unpopular in today’s world to speak of Christ Jesus as being the only way to salvation.  Yet, that is what the Bible teaches.  My prayer today is that we will share the good news of Christ with those around us, that we will share with them the joy of having the wound in our hearts healed, that they too will know that true life exists beyond the most striking experiences and painful gashes we encounter.  Has the heavenly surgeon healed your wound today?  Why don’t you make an appointment to see Him?