Day 17
Principle: Don’t let the heartache caused by others define you. let God tenderize your heart.
Have you been blinded by bitterness?
The great philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” During my formative years I would mask the pain of being abandoned by my father with a casual indifference to his public distinction. But all of my vehement rejection of his disregard for my life only verified how important his approval really was.
The Bible says, “The glory of children is their fathers.” (Proverbs 17:6, BBE) The original Hebrew language implies that this glory is “an ornament to be worn in honor… for all to behold its beauty.” Even when bitterness blinded me from seeing the beauty of my father’s glory, the longing for it was always there. It left me consigned to a lifelong tension: longing for his affection, while rejecting how insignificant thinking of him made me feel.
Young children are unable to differentiate between what is normal and healthy and what is merely common and dysfunctional. Without being able to understand that difference, my broken bond with my father led to an inherent distrust of all authority. I detested the duplicity between his public persona and our nonexistent private life.
Ask God to chip away the hardness in your heart. His promise is: “I will take away their hearts of stone and give them tender hearts instead…” (Ezekiel 11:19b, NLT)
Do it, Lord, tenderize my heart!
- How has the heartache caused by others defined you? In what ways have your responses affected your life/relationships?
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