His children's wounds

The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.
-The Book of Isaiah, chapter 30, verse 26

A couple of days ago, I was catching up with a friend over lunch, who brought up a point upon which he had been recently dwelling: that salvation, for the Christian, is not only, directly, or even primarily deliverance from earthly poverty, injustice, wickedness, and the other evils that immediately assail us when we consider the world around us. Rather, salvation is, at least in major part, a work wherein God removes us from His wrath and delivers us into His favor. We have sinned ourselves into becoming the objects of divine justice; a situation from which we cannot extricate ourselves, but from which God's grace brings us forth.

With this fresh in my consideration, I found it intriguing that Isaiah points out that the wounds of Israel which cried out for healing have been inflicted by God - and were, in turn, divinely healed. It brought to mind Proverbs 27:6: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." Yes, we can be wounded - even deeply so - by our loved ones. And sometimes such wounds come out of ignorance, or failure on their part: speaking rashly, unthinkingly, in haste or anger.

But often such wounds sting: not because of their intent, but because of our brokenness. A thoughtful bit of feedback clubs our overweening pride, or concern for our actions is taken as an affront to our carefully cultivated self-worth. And so we are hurt; not because our friends have spoken carelessly, in bad faith, but because our rose-tinted reproduction of ourselves is exposed as a poor Photoshop job, juxtaposed with the sharpness of reality.

And it's cause for thanks (mixed with a bit of chagrin) that our God is not a God who is interested in spinning a PR campaign to us; if we ask Him to speak Truth to us, He will show us the Truth.

So, yes: as we become His beloved children, the ones chosen to wrestle with Him, struggle with the truth, and run the long race to the end, we will find ourselves inflicted with divine wounds, wounds that cut through the surface of our lies and penetrate to the ugly (but redeemable!) reality underneath.

And the wonder of grace is that, having inflicted these wounds upon us, God immediately proceeds to turn and bandage them up, healing us at cost to Himself.

Incredible!

Proverbs 20:13

"Do not love sleep or you will grow poor;

"stay awake and you will have food to spare."