Where the Light Shines Through

I was recently reading something about Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen related to using the technique of art therapy for people who have experienced great loss. Apparently, she spent some time helping a twenty-four-year-old young man who had to have one of his legs amputated to stop the spread of bone cancer. This young man was angry and bitter. For a long time, he couldn’t seem to look beyond his disability.

Eventually, Dr. Remen was able to help him come to grips with his emotions and to let go of his disappointment. As he recovered, she also encouraged him to reach out and help others – to turn from an inward self-centered focus – to an outward focus. He began to visit others with physical disabilities and to share his own story with them.

One day this young man visited a young woman who had just been operated on for breast cancer. She was suffering from deep depression. Her room was silent, except for some music playing by her bed. He couldn’t seem to get through to her in his usual manner, so he tried something different. He suddenly took off his artificial leg and began dancing around the room on his one good leg. The woman began laughing. She said, “Ok if you can dance, I can sing.”  And she did.

About a year after the young man’s turnaround, he sat down with Dr. Remen to wrap up his therapy. At one point, they looked over the artwork and discussed how his views of life had changed. One picture expressed it beautifully. The young man, when asked to draw a picture of his body, had at first drawn a vase with an ugly, jagged crack running down the middle. This crack represented all the anger, and bitterness he felt after he lost his leg. He had seen himself as broken and therefore useless.

But now as the young man looked at the picture, he knew it no longer represented how he felt. He took a yellow crayon and drew vibrant yellow streamers pouring from the crack in the vase. Then he explained, “You see here, where it is broken, this is where the light shines through.”

Friend of Dial Hope, I don’t know all of the brokenness and hurt that you may be feeling today. But I do know this: that every one of you has been through difficult moments in life.  You have felt this brokenness.

The promise of the gospel, however, is that we worship a God who brings light out of darkness; hope out of despair. And so often what we find is that when we turn back to help others, it is precisely through our past heartache and brokenness and even failures that God’s light shines the brightest.

Let us pray: God of Grace, help us to trust you with our need. And empower us to help others. As we have been blessed, so may we be a blessing. In Christ’s name. Amen.