If your hand or your foot causes you to sin,
cut it off and throw it away.
It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled
than to have two hands or two feet and
be thrown into eternal fire.
And if your eye causes you to sin,
gouge it out and throw it away.
It is better for you to enter life with one eye
than to have two eyes and be
thrown into the fire of hell.
Mat. 18:8-9 NIV
 
From utter sympathy for little ones abused,
suddenly, abruptly Jesus changed the focus.

The problem, still being unfolded, turns against "me"
my precious hand, my very foot and even . . .
my own eye!

Hand is doing. I will do what has been done to me.
Foot is choosing, my step goes in the
direction of my decision.
Eye is the lens through which
I look out on things,
My very familiar view, clouded by the imprint of
my suffering and distorted by my perceptions.

My problem is . . . me.
My own doing, choosing, seeing.
 

The problem is not what was inflicted on me.
The problem is three "whats:"
what I "did" with it.
What I "chose" in reaction to it.
What I "see" by the influence of it.

The problem is me, my and mine.
Not them, theirs . . . his or hers.

Mine alone.

Another one's abuse becomes a crisis of my response,
not a nightmare of others' mistreatment.

I must solve my own self.
God obviously looks at "me" about me.

Drastic measures, stripping solution.
A picture of shocking self-annihilation.

The "cutting" is done by repentance for my
reaction and confession of it as
sin . . . inexcusable by even
the worst situation.

The "throwing" is dismissing from myself
forever, the wrongs I have inherited
as my very own.

Repentance is assuming all responsibility
for who you are and have become.
Throwing is getting rid of the attitudes
of mind and heart, submitting to God's
ways of thinking and doing.

Such drastic measures, spoken of as a violence.
A self-surgery of the sick-sin
you have contracted by exposure
but of which
you will have become the infectious carrier.
 

The abused "little one" is tempted to
possess and add
but Christ's solution is to
subtract and let go . . .

Cruelty leaves you twisted and to
be healed you must become
deliberately crippled instead.
"Twisted" is sick darkness in a veiled soul.
"Crippled" is living injured but clean and open faced.
 
You leave yourself diminished - half a person.
yet strangely whole by
dependence on God for your completion.
 
There is healing in God's touch and
restoration in His forgiveness,
but the crippled soul will bear its scar and damage
though not its pain.
Great portions of the self are lost,
irretrievably gone.

That loss of self needs the fullness of God and
the glory of His elaborate restoring grace.

The self-made "cripple" will be vindicated as Joseph,
share in God's plans as Daniel
and reign in splendor like David.

All these had the debilitating experience
of cruel leaders or parents and
through their self-annihilation,
God could trust them with a position of honor
and a place in His eternal lessons.

Two alternatives are named by Jesus,
drastic and opposite - only two -
to"enter life"(spiritual life) or
"be thrown into the fire of hell."

The hurting little child in us, pushes us
either into God by desperation
or into the actual fires of hell
for termination.
We who are hurt,
will annihilate ourselves.
We will!
By bitterness or by responsibility.
 

Our God is Father, Mother, Sister, Brother,
all in all!
And He gives fantastic compensation
for the suffering of unjust treatment
to His "little ones."

The way to healing of abuse is God's touch
but the way to transformation is through
severing . . . self-severing
by prayer and by choice.

"He restores my soul."

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Copyright © 2001 Martha Blaney Kilpatrick