Mending A Wounded Heart

28th October 2005, Singapore - Do you remember a rhyme that goes, "Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe. Get it done by half past two. My toe is peeping through. Cobbler, cobbler mend my shoe"? I'm no cobbler but I suppose it'd take some glue, maybe a new sole, and if it's made of a thinner fabric, some stitching might do the trick and then it's as good as new.

I wish relationships were just as simple to mend. But once you've sustained a tear, no matter how slight it is, it's not always easiest to close the wound. You make effort to take the sting out of things. You try to be nice and bury the hatchet, you try not to bring up the past, you try to wipe the slate clean, you try to behave normal and cordial, yet the other party continues to view you with suspicion. The slate's not clean, you're just viewed as trying to run down a person, you're just seen as going all out to mar a person' reputation - that's all the intention there ever is and ever will be.

What's the point of being cordial? Why take the blows? Why esteem others higher than yourself? Why let others step all over you? Why should I clean up the mess others make? Why should I absorb the blows and be wrongly accused and suffer public embarassment?

If only wounds of the heart were as easy to heal. But just as it takes a good adhesive plaster and dry skin for the patch to stick, it takes two persons mutually willing to forgive and forget.

Thought: If for what I'm worth (a sinner, helpless and an enemy of God - Roms 5:6,8,10), I'm forgiven, restored and loved by Him above, am I above it to not show likewise to someone else? If Christ were publicly shamed, taunted and humiliated falsely, yet showed grace and mercy, dare I be greater and withhold?