Isaiah 42:3 – A bruised reed He will not break, and a smouldering wick He will not snuff out. The world in which we live is a world full of broken and smouldering things as well as lives. Thus the world has become a heap of things and lives of people which are thrown away as trash. But the Lord works very differently with people. He waits for and welcomes those who are broken in themselves and are declared useless by others. He picks up those human lives which are written off by the world as failures. When the world doesn’t accept the defeated, the Lord looks for those who are willing to accept their defeats and failures and to turn such lives around. The world and sin are the reasons why these lives are broken. Wrong or immature decisions are often the reasons why people fail and are subsequently stamped useless. But if the defeated and failed persons wrap the broken pieces in the rags of their lives and take it to the Lord, He will accept such broken and smouldering human packages and make them whole again. He will apply the Balm of Gilead on them and heal their brokenness. He will straighten out the lives which are crooked. He will rub off the smouldering marks on the wicks and use them again. He is the God of hope who puts hope into the most hopeless lives. He doesn’t write off any life which comes to Him, but rewrites these lives for Him. He is interested in wiping off the dark and stained past from these lives and makes them bright. Those broken lives will be set properly and healed by Him who is the Great Physician. He not only heals physical ailments, but also the emotional and sinful lives of humans and makes saints out of even the greatest sinners. He invites such broken and smouldering lives to go to Him to get a new and brighter beginning with full of hope for a glittering future.
Dear friend, do you feel that your life has been marred by the past events and decisions? Do you think that you have messed up your life and that nothing can straighten it out? Have others around you written you off as a failure? Remember, our Lord is the Lord of the second chance. He restored the lives of prophets like Jonah, kings like David, Apostles like Peter, backsliders like John Mark and Patriarchs like Jacob. All of them had gone through a brokenness experience in their lives. The world around them wrote them off. They were broken reeds and the smouldering wicks at one time and there was no hope for them or about them. But the Lord took their lives, restored them, gave them new chances and opportunities and put them back to working order. He filled their lives with hope. He recommissioned them and gave their lives new direction. He healed their brokenness by His touch. His restoration is like the mending of a broken net or setting of a fractured bone and when He is done with it, it would be new again with full potential for the Master’s use. So dear friend, if you think that there is no hope for you, please know that the Lord of creation and re-creation is able to set you free from your present situation of hopelessness and put you back on His track for a new life of hope. If you want to enjoy the new future that is available through Jesus Christ, all it takes is for you to surrender yourself to Him in whatever broken or smouldering condition you are in. Submit yourself to the fingers of the great Potter who can make you a new person with new possibilities and usefulness for His glory. Remember, there is hope for you even in the midst of hopelessness.
Psalms 103:3 – (The Lord) forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases. Thought for TodayThe Lord puts His hope in those thrown away lives by restoring them and making them whole again.
