“The hands of the King are the hands of a healer, and so should the rightful king be known….”
I am so bone-weary of suffering.
I see it everywhere I turn. We think, somehow, that we ought to be immune from the diagnosis, the fractured relationships, the depression, the heartache, the soul-wrecking pain. It can’t possibly be happening to us, can it? As if we, out of all the people on earth, ought to get a free pass, a trail of only sunshine and rainbows through this aching, weary life.
Suffering isn’t an option. It is, sadly, a bitter reality, one that we often flinch and cower from. One that lines our days with sorrow and traces them with regret and tears.
And yet it holds in its hands the greatest joy we may ever know.
In Tolkien’s Return of the King, a brutal battle has been fought on a grim field at the foot of a white city, leaving dead and wounded everywhere, broken bodies strewn about. Darkness was defeated, but at an immeasurable cost, and the war is far from being won. Faramir, steward of Gondor, lies in the houses of healing within the city, wounded in body and spirit, having lost both father and brother. Into the city, under cover of darkness after the battle, slips a cloaked figure. Aragorn, the rightful king of Gondor, has returned, but not with pomp and glory. Instead, he comes in humility in the dead of night, dismissing the honorable entrance he deserves, to tend the wounded.
The healing of Faramir was not an easy task. Aragorn labored in healing him, calling him out from the shadow of darkness under which he lay. And when Faramir awoke, although he had never seen Aragorn before with his waking eyes, he smiled in respect and love and said, “My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?”
It would seem that Aragorn somehow met Faramir in the midst of his suffering, and thus Faramir knew him, in a way he could not have otherwise, when he awoke. The healing hands of the King brought him through and out of the darkness in which he wandered, into a golden age of restoration and renewal.
We, too, have a King who heals. But our King gave of Himself, offered up His own body, for our healing. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus came:
“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
Ours is a King who walked the loneliest, most painful, dark road in the history of the world, for us. He loves us with the strength of a thousand suns, with the pouring out of his lifeblood for the healing of the world. He left a place whose streets are paved with gold to take a thorny road that broke Him for our salvation, and He never once wavered in His love for us.
Do we even begin to comprehend what it means to be loved like that?
To understand the price He paid?
Suffering tends to make us forget. To think that He doesn’t love us. To blame Him, of all people, for the pain we endure. But He came to suffer and save us. And in perhaps the most curious, remarkable thing about life on this middle-earth, our suffering causes us to know Him in a way we never could in times of peace and plenty.
Paul talks about the ‘fellowship of His sufferings.’ There is a deep-down knowing, a communion, a consolation that can hardly be expressed in any human language, when you walk through suffering and turn, in the dead midst of it, to Jesus.
When we walk through the valley of shadow, He is with us. When we think we cannot take another step, He restores our soul. In our human frailness, we give up, and He gathers us up in His arms. He is good beyond anything our minds can comprehend, kind beyond measure, filled with lovingkindness. We cannot truly know His goodness without suffering. There is a ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’ that more than compensates for the debilitating pain of this life.
Aragorn’s hands, the hands of a king, healed. But the hands of our King not only heal, they were stretched wide on a wooden cross for us. His suffering brought us permanent healing, eternal life, the weight of glory. His death defeated the grave, pushing back the tide of evil, and ushered in glorious hope. We stand now in grace, walled in by mercy, fortified by love.
It is more than just knowing that He also has suffered, and so He can understand our pain. It is understanding that He suffered for us. His death was the price for the renewal of the world, for the piecing back together of our broken hearts and bodies and minds. We no longer have to suffer in futility with no end in sight. There is an end, and it will be good, because He loves us more than we could ever comprehend.
It is in the times of my deepest suffering that I have caught vivid glimpses of this love that fights for us, that works on our behalf, this voice that calls us out of darkness and into the light of life. The nail-scarred hands of our King are the most patient, gentle hands in the world.
There is a coming restoration, a time when suffering will be done away with forever. A time when the King will return to rule and reign, when a highway of holiness will be built and a glad river will flow. Our tears will become a dim memory, and our souls will be restored.
How we long. And wait. But we can have joy even now, in the midst of heartache. We can recognize our King’s voice above the waves of grief, through the winds of agony, calling us out and up and onwards. He will never leave us or forsake us. He is in the business of mending broken hearts, of leaving us more whole and healed and glad than we ever were before.
How wonderful He is.
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” – Psalm 147:3
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