He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. – Psalm 147:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 1, 2019): Psalm 147

The words were written by Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees in 1971.

            And how can you mend a broken heart?

            How can you stop the rain from falling down?

            How can you stop the sun from shining?

            What makes the world go round?

            How can you mend a broken man?

            How can a loser ever win?

            Please help me mend my broken heart

            And let me live again.

We can heal the body, but the heart is another matter. Amid an opioid crisis in the developed world, I believe that people begin to take the powerful pain killers because of some physical issue that is causing the individual to suffer pain, but what often keeps them taking the pills is the emotional pain that they cannot seem to heal. And so the words of the Gibbs brothers seem to be appropriate. How can you mend a broken heart? Or is it as impossible to heal a broken heart as it is to stop the rain from falling or the sun from shining? I know that the expression the Brothers Gibb (The Bee Gees) is poetic in nature and not supposed to be a literal expression of the pain of a broken heart, but anyone who has ever experienced a broken heart or lived with emotional pain knows how hard it is to heal.

In fact, as I meet with people in pain on a daily basis, I often wonder if part of the problem is not the physical pain, but instead that the patient denies the emotional hurt that they are experiencing and that the doctors are ignoring it because they don’t know how to heal the broken heart.

The Psalmist points at God and says, “he can do it.” The worst pain that you know and the one that no one knows how to heal, God can heal it. Sometimes, I think we deny the power of the problem; we don’t want anyone to know that our heart is broken, but the truth is the polar opposite. Not only are our hearts broken, but they are broken repeatedly through our interaction with people. One lesson that we need to learn is that we can never underestimate the power of our presence, or the ability of your absence in a variety of situations to break the hearts of the people in your lives.

How can a loser, win? How can the sun be stopped from shining, or the rain be stopped from falling from the sky? How do you mend a broken heart? The Psalmist has the answer for all of these questions, and it is God. He is the one who heals the broken heart. 

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 148