Walking Wounded Find Healing
Scott Couper – South Africa
There are about ten families in the small church I minister.
Divorce. Battered Wife. Attempted Suicide, Clinical Depression. Self-Mutilation. Rape. Children Born Outside of Marriage. Alcoholism. Unemployment…
Scott Couper – South Africa
There are about ten families in the small church I minister.
Divorce. Battered Wife. Attempted Suicide, Clinical Depression. Self-Mutilation. Rape. Children Born Outside of Marriage. Alcoholism. Unemployment…
No exaggeration. Each of the above ten affect each of the families at the church in which I minister. I call them “the walking wounded.” This past Sunday, a mother and her daughter were in tears because there was a “knock-down drag-out” before worship with the boyfriend/father. I have yet to do a baptism where there are two parents present, let alone married. Few husbands worship with their wives. Lots of fractured souls.
But week after week, we come together to allow God to heal us. Worship is a means by which to hold-on for another week. We worship on Sunday seeking encouragement, knowing Monday through Saturday will likely diminish it. Worship is about sanity. No one yells and screams. No one strikes another during the Passing of the Peace. God’s Word, rather than curses, is proclaimed. Affirmation, rather than criticism, is heard. Church is a place of calm. It is a place of refuge and safety. When the world outside is chaos, I strive, as a servant of God, to ensure that a divine perspective prevails within the community of faith.
This Lenten season, we as families within a community of faith will examine our lives, our choices, and our habits. We will pray for a complete renewal of our hearts, not one that only endures within the confines of a sanctuary. However, despite our failures, we will be assured that neither divorce, nor abuse, nor attempted suicide, nor depression, nor pain, nor rape, nor weakness, nor addiction, nor joblessness, “nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39)! With this assurance, we will be healed sufficiently to go out and heal others.
Scott Couper
Scott Couper and Susan Valiquette are missionaries serving in South Africa. Scott serves with the UCCSA as pastor at a UCCSA congregation in Durban. Susan serves with the Inanda Seminary in KwaZuluNatal, South Africa as chaplain.