Daily Manna · Day 48 · February 17
The Heart Doctor
“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”
A woman drives four blocks out of her way every day so she does not pass a particular street. She has been doing it for nine months. Nobody in her life knows she does it, and if asked she would say she is doing fine, and most days the word holds.
We are practised at this. We tell people the anniversary has passed, as though grief kept a calendar, and we say fine so smoothly that it comes out before we have decided to say it. Then a song, a smell, somebody's handwriting on an old envelope, and the floor gives way, and afterwards we are embarrassed rather than comforted, which is its own small tragedy.
And the psalm keeps company we would not have chosen for it. He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds; and then, in the very next line, he telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. Two verses on, he casteth the wicked down to the ground. This is not a gentle passage. The one binding the wound is the one counting galaxies and the one bringing down the arrogant, and He is not sentimental about any of it. Bindeth up is a physical word, the wrapping of a fracture. It is a word for something that will take time and hurt while it happens.
Lord, we have been saying fine to people who asked, and to you. We have treated the date on the calendar as evidence. Here is the truth: it still hurts, and here is exactly where. We are not asking you to say it was small. You never have. Bind it up as slowly as it needs, and give us the nerve to let one person see it uncovered this week, since nothing gets bound while it stays under a sleeve. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 48 is What Jabez Asked (1 Chronicles 4:10).