Will You Choose Braces?

Daily Reading: Ezekiel 30

It has not been bound up, to heal it by binding it with a bandage, so that it may become strong. (Ezekiel 30.21)

Devotional Thought: My friends were faced with a choice.  Their son's jaw was not properly aligned.  They could get corrective braces for their six-year-old and go through 24 months of cost and inconvenience and sacrifice.  Or they could let it go, and when he was an adult, he would have to have his jaw broken and reset.  At that point, it wouldn't cost them a thing if they would so choose.  They chose to pay the cost now.  They chose inconvenience.  They chose sacrifice.  They chose braces.

We discover in Ezekiel, however, that Egypt chose a different course.  They chose to wait, hoping that their brokenness would somehow heal itself.  It was not "bound up, to heal it by binding with a bandage, so that it may become strong."  The result?  Rather than the broken arm getting better, God said, "I will break both the strong arm and the one that is broken... the sword will fall from his hand... he will groan like a man mortally wounded... the arms of Pharaoh shall fall..."  When it comes to setting a bone, it doesn't pay to delay.

Is there something in your life that is broken?  It may be tempting to ignore it and hope that it heals itself or that you can learn to live with it.  Healing may, in your mind, require too much cost, too much inconvenience, too much sacrifice.  Would you dare come to the Great Physician and allow him to bind your brokenness with the bandage of grace?

Will you choose braces?

Prayer: "Out of my bondage, sorrow and night, Jesus, I come; Jesus I come.  Into Thy freedom, gladness, and light, Jesus, I come to Thee.  Out of my sickness into Thy health, out of my want and into Thy wealth.  Out of my sin and into Thyself, Jesus I come to Thee."  Amen.  (William Sleeper)

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 44.17-26

17 All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant.

18 Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way;

19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death.

20 If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god,

21 would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart.

22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!

24 Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?

25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly clings to the ground.

26 Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!