Make Sense of Your StorySample

GOD IS DOING A NEW THING

In Jeremiah 30:12, God says to Israel: “Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing.”

This is precisely what many people with a history of trauma feel. We wonder if our injured hearts are too damaged for genuine healing to happen.

Then just a few verses later, God says, “But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds” (v. 17).

These verses acknowledge two things that seem to be impossible to hold together. On the one hand, the text acknowledges the severity of the wound. On the other hand, the text acknowledges the possibility of healing.

Many of us have trained our imaginations to stop being able to conceive of God intervening in a hopeless situation and creating something new.

Think about this for a minute. What is required for the genuinely new to come into existence in your life? An act of creation. Do we think the Creator stopped making new things? What if the Creator has the freedom to continue to create new things? The present ordering of your life claims to be the final ordering of your life. But what if the Creator can create new green shoots in your life even in places where nothing seems to grow?

Can you feel your imagination open to this possibility? Can you feel hope rise? Maybe you also feel something inside of you slam the door shut on that rising hope. It’s a little voice saying, Don’t be a fool. You’ve hoped in the past and it’s only led to disappointment.

We all war with hope, though the nature of that war looks different for each of us. So why is hope reasonable? Why is it worth keeping? Because the history of the world is the history of a Maker making new things that are underived from the present circumstances.

We read in Isaiah, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19). All you might see right now is an impossible situation. But God is a God of Creation. Of new life. Of hope.

What is one thing you are afraid to hope for? What is something you have stopped hoping for? How would engaging with your story help you to hope in the new thing God wants to do in your life?

If you enjoyed this content and want to continue your story work, this plan has been adapted from Make Sense of Your Story: Why Engaging Your Past with Kindness Changes Everything. Order your copy today!