A Prayer for Healing

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
— Psalm 147:3

The body knows things the mind hasn't caught up to yet — that something is wrong, that the mending is slow, that there are days the whole self just aches and there isn't a word for it. Healing doesn't always look the way we think it will. Sometimes it's quick and clean, and sometimes it's the long road, and sometimes it's a kind of healing we didn't ask for and don't quite recognize yet. But the asking — the laying of the hurt before the Lord and saying heal this — that never changes. It's as old as anything.

Lord, I need your healing.
You see what is broken — in my body, in my heart, in the places I haven't shown anyone else.
Bind up what is torn. Mend what the world has worn thin.
I don't know what the healing will look like, or how long the road is, but I know I can't walk it without you.
Meet me here in the middle of it, and don't let me go.
Amen.

It wouldn't be honest to say healing always arrives on our schedule, or that the prayer always gets the answer we'd write for ourselves. That's not how it works, and saying otherwise would be unkind. But I've found this much is true: the Lord does not waste the broken places. He binds them up — in his own time, in his own way — and what comes out the other side is something that holds. Not new, exactly. But whole.

If this is where you are today, keep this one close. Ruby writes a short devotional every morning in the same spirit — Scripture, and a few plain words to carry. You can subscribe — it's free, or stay a while and read more of her writing.