Day 24: Healing for Feeling Abandoned

Dear friend,

I want to touch briefly on the healing power of God’s love for the one who has experienced rejection from his/her parents. I believe personally this is probably the commonest single problem or agony of our contemporary culture – the child who has never known real love and acceptance from his/her parents, and primarily from his/her father. For I believe that God created children to feel the need of a father’s love, that through that feeling they might go beyond the human father and find a heavenly father.

But whatever way we view this, there is no question that one of the deepest hurts that many people face today is the hurt of feeling unwanted, unappreciated, unloved by those who naturally would be the first and the most loving – our parents. And in Psalm 27, verses 9 and 10, David himself, the psalmist, faces this problem and shows us the solution:

“Do not hide Your face from me, do not turn Your servant away in anger; You have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Saviour. [Notice that word – reject.] Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.” (NIV)

You see, even if father and mother are not to us what we could reasonably expect they might be, even if they forsake us, even if they abandon us – and I’ve dealt with many people who in childhood were actually abandoned by their parents – nevertheless, we can turn to the Lord and say, "Do not reject me. Lord, don’t treat me as my parents treated me. You can take the place of father and mother just as you can take the place of husband to the rejected woman."

It’s in this free, unmerited love of God that comes in through the valley of trouble – the Valley of Achor, opens up a door of hope, that we can find healing for every wound, especially the wounds of rejection.

If you’ve been struggling with this problem, maybe today you say to yourself, "Well, I’m really there in the Valley of Achor." Turn to the Lord and let Him open to you the door of hope and reveal that love which alone can heal the deepest of all your wounds.

For reflection and prayer

Have you received God’s healing love for your emotional wounds?