Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: February 2nd

THE BRUISED REED RESTORED

A bruised reed shall He not break. - Isaiah 42:3

Here is the picture. A slender bulrush, growing by the margin of some tarn or pond; its sides crushed and dented in by some outward power, some gust of wind, some sudden blow, the foot of some passing animal. The head is hanging by a thread, but it is not yet snapped or broken off from the stem. It is "bruised," but the bruise is not irreparable. And so, says this text, there are reeds bruised and "shaken by the wind," but yet not broken. And the tender Christ comes, with His gentle, wise, skillful surgery, to bind these up and to make them strong again.

On no man has sin fastened its venomous claws so deeply but that these may be wrenched away. In none of us has the virus so gone through our veins but that it is capable of being expelled. The reeds are all bruised, the reeds are none of them broken. And so this text comes with its great triumphant hopefulness, and gathers into one mass as capable of restoration the most abject, the most worthless, the most ignorant, the most sensuous, the most godless, the most Christ-hating of the race. And He looks on all the tremendous bulk of a world’s sins with the confidence that He can move that mountain and cast it into the depths of the sea.

In accordance with other metaphors of Scripture, we may think of "the bruised reed" as expressive of the condition of men whose hearts have been crushed by the consciousness of their sins. "The broken and the contrite heart," bruised and pulverized, as it were, by a sense of evil, may be typified for us by this bruised reed. And then from the words of this text there emerges the great and blessed hope that such a heart, wholesomely removed from its self-complacent fancy of soundness, shall certainly be healed and bound up by His tender hand. Did you ever see a gardener dealing with some plant, a spray of which may have been wounded? How delicately and tenderly the big, clumsy hand busies itself about the tiny spray, and by stays and bandages brings it into an erect position, and then gives it water and loving care. Just so does Jesus Christ deal with the conscious and sensitive heart of a man that has begun to find out how bad he is, and has been driven away from all his foolish confidence. Christ comes to such a one and restores him, and, just because he is crashed, deals with him gently, pouring in His consolation. Wheresoever there is a touch of penitence, there is present a restoring Christ.

Brother and sister! suffering from any sorrow, and bleeding from any wound, there is balm and a physician. There is one hand that will never be laid with blundering kindness or with harshness upon our sore hearts, but whose touching will be healing and whose presence will be peace.

The Christ that knows our sins and sorrows will not break the bruised reed. The whole race of man may be represented in that parable that came from His own lips, as fallen among thieves that have robbed him and wounded him, and left him bruised, and, blessed be God! only "half dead,"- sorely wounded, indeed, but not so sorely but that he may be restored. And there comes One with the wine and the oil, and pours them into the wounds.