Broken Bones

VBS, 2006 - Chaguanas Trinidad

A new command I give you:

Love one another.

As I have loved you, so

you must love one another.

John 13:34

I read something today by O. S. Hawkins that penetrated my heart and caused me to examine my attitude towards someone who suffers a moral earthquake or falls into temptation.

Imagine going out during the noon hour in a metropolitan area when the streets are filled with people --- pedestrians walking everyhwere --- and seeing a lady step off a curb. She trips and breaks her arm. Lying there in the street, she is writhing in pain.
One person walks by and says to his friend, "Look at her lying there. She's broken her arm."

Another sees her lying there in pain and simply criticizes her. "You're in the way of pedestrian traffic. We're trying to get by here, and we have to step over you. Can't you move?"

Someone else stops, but only to counsel the woman. "You know, if you had watched where you were going you wouldn't have tripped over that curb." Now she really needs to hear that, doesn't she?

Someone else looks on from a distance and condemns the poor woman. "That's stupid. That is so stupid. She shouldn't have done that."

Sound riduculous? Certainly it does! And yet that is precisely how we act when we find that a brother or a sister has been caught in a trespass. Just because that lady has broken her arm does not mean it must be amputated. It can be mended. It can be put back in place. It can be restored, and it can be useful again.

According to O. S. Hawkins, if we are walking by the Spirit, we will:

Set those broken bones so they can walk again.

Mend those torn nets so they can fish again.

Restore those fallen lives so they can live again.