Me Too
Dear Friends,
“I’m hungry and anxious and controlling and ashamed and angry and sad. I’m sinful.” So writes Emma Scrivener in her new book A New Day. It is a searingly honest account of her struggles, and yet a supremely hopeful one as she demonstrates how to bring each of these things to Christ – to find that he is the one who satisfies our hunger, reduces our anxiety, really is in control, bore our shame along with our sin, puts everything right and offers real hope.
I could have written “Me too” alongside her words. I too am hungry and anxious and controlling and ashamed and angry and sad. I too am sinful in all of those ways (not all of them all the time, but each of them some of the time). And my guess is that you are too.
That quotation comes in a section headed “A community of wounded healers.” She is talking about the church. We are the wounded healers. Well, we are all wounded. The question is whether we will also be healers. She quotes Henri Nouwen: “We all are wounded people. The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but, ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.” Thankfully, our Saviour is the ultimate wounded healer, who shows us his wounds and is not ashamed either of them or of us.
Warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister/Vicar)