We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

In Search of Healing During Advent

The First Sunday of Advent

Tyler Tully was a guest-poster on The Femonite today. He generally blogs at The Jesus Event and is a contributor to the Mennonerds network. His guest post deals with the flashbacks of a childhood filled with abuse that are triggered when he hears the cries of his five month old babies. The season of Advent is a season of waiting and darkness in the church calendar, and although it brings with it the coming of Christ, it is a season that welcomes our sorrow and pain. It calls us to keep each other company in the darkness as we wait. If you’re a person who struggles as Christmas approaches, we hope this post will call you to be present to the God who grieves with us and heals our wounds.

From Tyler’s piece:

Still, there is an expected healing of hope in the Seasonal air. The Incarnation reminds me, that although I enter into counseling one month before Christmas Eve, I do not bear this burden alone. Together we journey with Jesus in a place of vulnerability towards community. As a family, we either heal together or we enable the stinging pain of abuse to linger. But even when healing occurs, sometimes scars remain. And although I know that the scars I bear come part and parcel with being human, I worship the Incarnate God who resurrected triumphantly with scars of His own.

Image by  Susanne Nilsson via Compfight

Related Reading

Corrective Love

drp via Compfight Kathy Escobar posted the other day about providing “corrective experiences” to those who have been hurt in the past. How many of us have approached Christians with our wounds and have been offered more of the same instead of the love and acceptance we’re longing for? How beautiful it would be if…

How NOT to be Christ-Centered: A Review of God With Us – Part II

In Part I of my review of Scott Oliphint’s God With Us we saw that Oliphint is attempting to reframe divine accommodation in a Christ-centerd way. Yet, while he affirms that “Christ is the quintessential revelation of God,” he went on to espouse a classical view of God that was anchored in God’s “aseity,” not…

Was Jesus Fully God and Fully Human?

In the previous post I argued for the logical possibility of the Incarnation, so today I’d like to establish its biblical foundation. This will be review for some readers, but it’s important review because this doctrine is the absolute bedrock of the Christian faith. For example, this doctrine alone is what allows us to claim…

Close Encounters of the Third (Kingdom) Kind: A Reflection on the Missio Alliance Conference

What an incredible gathering we had last week! It was invigorating, informative and fun! What stands out most to me was the family-feel of the conference. Like most of you, I have usually felt a bit alien when attending Christian conferences throughout the years. Not this one. You could sense the shared kingdom ethos in…

Matter Matters

Barbara Brown Taylor shares some thoughts on why our bodies matter to God. Thanks Rachel!

Giant Jesus

Yesterday’s post featured a video of Greg sharing about the role of the church in manifesting God’s character to the world. Here are some follow-up thoughts on that topic. The NT often uses the metaphor of “the body of Christ” to describe the church. When Jesus walked the earth, he did so in an ordinary…

Topics: