Friday, December 14, 2018
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I don't mind visiting people in the hospital. I just don't like to stay in hospitals myself. My medical value system sort of works like this: minor surgery is any operation on somebody else, and major surgery is any operation on me. I've actually learned there's something worse than being a hospital patient myself. It's having one of our grandchildren in the hospital, especially when the treatment means pain. I can take it when I'm the one hurting. It's just hard to take it when it's one of them. When our grandson was only ten months old he had to go to the emergency room in another town, and it wasn't a happy time for the little guy. They had to try multiple times to get a needle into a vein for a blood test. It was excruciating! He was increasingly traumatized by one injection after another and that big old oxygen mask they kept holding over his nose.
As soon as I got there, I decided there was just one thing I could do that might help. It's a little song I've sung to him since the first times I ever held him. It's always seemed to calm him down, even when he was unusually upset. So I leaned down so my cheek was touching his cheek and I began to gently sing our little song in his ear. With medical folks continuing their necessary but pretty scary work, he stopped his panic crying and he settled down a lot. I must have stayed there for 30 or 40 minutes. I think that song must have nearly driven a couple of nurses cuckoo. But my grandson...well, a little song made a big difference.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Tender Song in Your Troubled Times."
After that night, I got to thinking how many times God has come into my traumatic moments and, in essence, He's sung His song quietly in my heart; a song that has calmed me so many times...from the loss of a baby to losing my wife. From the body blow of very bad news to the stresses of financial crisis or an overload of responsibility. You may be in one of those troubled, even traumatizing times right now. Listen for your Father's singing. It's the song that says, "A lot has changed, My child, but the most important thing has not. I'm still here watching over you. I've helped you through times like these before, and you're OK because I'm here."
Our word for today from the Word of God in Zephaniah 3:17 paints this reassuring picture of our Heavenly Father's love for us. "The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing." He will quiet you with His love expressed in His singing over you.
You can't imagine how much you mean to Him. The more you're hurting, the more fearful you are, the closer He gets. He is, in the words of the 46th Psalm, "our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble" (Psalm 46:1 - KJV). Those verses go on to say, "Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way...the Lord Almighty is with us...Be still and know that I am God."
And the psalmist said in Psalm 32, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
As Corrie ten Boom, concentration camp survivor, said, "Don't wrestle, just nestle." In your trauma times, you can let your fears take over, or you can let your Father take over. You choose what you focus on. Isaiah says of God, "You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on you" (Isaiah 26:3 - NLT).
Peace for the trusting. Why? Because your one fixed point in a world where everything else is moving is your never-leaving, always-loving Heavenly Father. You're OK because He's there with you, close to you, singing to your soul the song that He's sung every time you've needed Him.