Time for Healing

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

What should we do when memories of an offense against us don’t go away? We must realize that healing our memories takes time.

Some people say, “Time heals all wounds.” No. Time in and of itself doesn’t heal anything. I once finished doing a cable news interview, and as I was driving home, a large part of my front tooth fell out. I thought, Man, this was God’s provision. Had it happened an hour earlier, I would have looked like one of the Beverly Hillbillies on TV. When I got home, I could have said, “Well, time heals all wounds. I’ll just let this go, and eventually my tooth will grow back.” Would that have happened? Of course not. I had to go through a very painful procedure the next day to get it fixed. Time by itself doesn’t heal. Time heals only once the proper procedure is done.

It’s the same thing with forgiveness. Time doesn’t heal anything. In fact, time will cause bitterness to get worse until it’s dealt with. But after we have gone through the surgical process called forgiveness, time can be our friend and help heal painful memories.

Corrie ten Boom was placed in a Nazi German concentration camp along with her sister, Betsie. After the end of the war, she still dealt with painful memories of what was done to her and her sister. Ten Boom later compared the reverberating of old hurts to the ringing of a church bell. “Up in that church tower,” she said, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. . . . The same is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised when the old angry thoughts keep coming up for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”

The ding-dongs of hurts long past may or may not stop completely, but in time, their frequency and intensity will diminish if you let go of those offenses through the process of forgiveness.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “Forgiving Without Forgetting,” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2015.

Corrie ten Boom, Tramp for the Lord (Christian Literature Crusade and Fleming H. Revell, 1974), 179–80.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.