Russell A. Cardwell Online

We are the lost, the children of Adam and Eve,
groping for light in this dark, this fallen world.
We are a tough people, thick of skin and hard of shell.
For our own protection, we must be so.
But the very armor that protects us from the sins of this world
also shields us from the love of God which is in Christ.

Yet no armor is perfect: there are chinks.
Sooner or later, by chance, design, or circumstance,
someone finds those chinks and wounds us through them.
We are all of us wounded,
we are all of us scarred,
we are all of us broken,
battered,
bruised.

Our wounds are the openings through which Christ enters.
The love of God that is in Christ Jesus can only enter into us
through our brokenness,
through our woundedness.
Christ enters through those openings and inhabits those scars,
those bruises, those wounds.
He takes our wounds upon himself—
Our wounds become his wounds.

And only through our woundedness,
only through those openings created by our woundedness
do we become whole,
can become healed,
can we be restored to community
with God and with one another.

He is the healer of the brokenhearted. He is the one who bandages their wounds.
-Psalms 147:3

He certainly has taken upon himself our suffering and carried our sorrows, but we thought that God had wounded him, beat him, and punished him. He was wounded for our rebellious acts. He was crushed for our sins. He was punished so that we could have peace, and we received healing from his wounds.
-Isaiah 53:4-5

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You can say the prayer
and not pray the prayer.

• In my Dreams
• The Hiker and the Fog
• God’s Time
• More Messy Meditation
• The Presence of God

I’ve been taking some courses from the Christian counseling center, and yesterday morning (Thursday) I had to go by their headquarters near downtown Beaumont to pick up some materials. As I left, I changed my mind about how I was going to come back. Instead of going through downtown, I decided to come back on MLK. As a result, I ended up turning down a side road that ran between Magnolia and MLK. When I came around the corner, I found the street was full of prostitutes. They were right out in the street, going up to peoples cars.

I’d seen things like this in Houston when I lived there in the 80’s, but I never saw anything like this here. It’s one thing to know it goes on somewhere out of sight, but it was a shock to turn the corner and come face to face with it. And face to face I was—for a moment, at least. One of them was coming toward my car! Although she couldn’t have been more than thirty or so, the pain and horror of her life was graven so deeply into the lines of her face, I couldn’t bear to look at her for more than a moment. I had to stare at my steering wheel. (Not to mention I didn’t want her coming up to my car!)

We all step out of the light sometimes and stumble around in the darkness for a while before being drawn back to the path. But there are people who’ve been stumbling in darkness so long and who’ve wandered so far from the path they don’t know what light is anymore.

Jesus said, “The poor will be with you always.” But the poor are not really with us any more. They’re all on the other side of town, and we don’t go over there; we never see them; we’re not exposed to the lives they live. I can’t help thinking that if we lived among them as Jesus did, if we spent all our days surrounded by the kind of people I saw in the street yesterday, we could not help but feel differently about the lives we live.

So my prayer request is this: Offer a prayer today for those who are truly poor—not just poor in material goods, but poor in spirit—those whose souls are destitute, who have forgotten how to hope. These are those that Jesus had the heart for—those whom He called “blessed.”

• Let God Sort ‘Em Out
• Leave a Legacy
• Kingdom Builders Wanted
• Meditate » Mutter
• Preparing His Servants

The C. S. Lewis novel I’m reading, That Hideous Strength, has this statement: “Every conscious being is either obeying God, or else is disobeying God.”

I’ve never looked at it in such black-and-white terms before. I’ve always thought of most things as being neutral. Sometimes I’m doing God’s will, sometimes I’m disobeying God’s will, but most of the stuff I’m doing has nothing to do with God’s will—just neutral activities. But I think he’s right about this—that all the neutral stuff can really be divided into obedience or disobedience of God. So how would that affect your life? What if about every action, not just the tough choices, you asked, “Is this what God wants me to do right now?” I hesitate even to try something like that.

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One of the characters in the C.S. Lewis novel I’ve been reading, Perelandra, said that God withholds a good from us only to offer us a greater good instead.

I wish I could have such simple assurance when my plans go awry.

• But One Thing is Needful
• If You Can’t Worship While You’re Doing It . . .
• The Gate Before; the Gate Behind
• Anselm or Finney?
• Harlots and Idols Over Coffee

Maybe God can forgive once and be done,
but I have to forgive over and again.

Forgiveness is a garden
that must be watered every day.
Sometimes, you have to pull the weeds
that spring up to strangle it.

Self-righteousness, jealousy, envy, resentment—
these weeds grow fast and hardy.
Love and patience grow ever so slow,
and need nurture every day.

• Only a Small Miracle
• Satanic Attack