Healing

Forgiveness is to deal with our emotions by sending them away—by denying ourselves the dark pleasures of venting them or fondling them in our minds… Forgiveness is more than a matter of refusing to hate someone. It is also a matter of choosing to demonstrate love and acceptance to the offender… Pain is the consequence of sin; there is no easy way to deal with it. Wood, nails, and pain are the currency of forgiveness, the love that heals.

I promise you these storms are only trying to wash you clean.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.

Forgiveness is the well from which we draw the water to wash

THE TEARS ... streamed down, and I let them flow as freely as they would, making of them a pillow for my heart. On them it rested.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

And when she took hold of his lower arm, thick as her thigh, and tickled him until that sulky boy’s face opened up in a smile, it was like a plaster cast cracking around a piece of jewelry, and when this happened it was as if something started singing inside Sonja. And they belonged only to her, those moments.

It was the first time since the accident that he heard Sonja laughing. As if it was pouring out of her, without the slightest possibility of stopping it, like she was being wrestled to the ground by her own giggling. She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space. It made Ove feel as if his chest was slowly rising out of the ruins of a collapsed house after an earthquake. It gave his heart space to beat again.

And if Anita hadn’t known better, she could have sworn that in the minutes that followed she heard Rune laughing out loud several times. Chapter 36. A Man Called Ove and a Whiskey

Those who made them did not desire strength or domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things unstained.

‘Some hope that the Three Rings, which Sauron has never touched, would then become free, and their rulers might heal the hurts of the world that he has wrought. But maybe when the One has gone, the Three will fail, and many fair things will fade and be forgotten. That is my belief.’

His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.’

He may walk a little in the care of his friends.’

And it is not always good to be healed in body. Nor is it always evil to die in battle, even in bitter pain.

But when Aragorn arose all that beheld him gazed in silence, for it seemed to them that he was revealed to them now for the first time. Tall as the sea-kings of old, he stood above all that were near; ancient of days he seemed and yet in the flower of manhood; and wisdom sat upon his brow, and strength and healing were in his hands, and a light was about him.

In his time the City was made more fair than it had ever been, even in the days of its first glory; and it was filled with trees and with fountains, and its gates were wrought of mithril and steel, and its streets were paved with white marble; and the Folk of the Mountain laboured in it, and the Folk of the Wood rejoiced to come there; and all was healed and made good, and the houses were filled with men and women and the laughter of children, and no window was blind nor any courtyard empty; and after the ending of the Third Age of the world into the new age it preserved the memory and the glory of the years that were gone.

Then Éowyn looked in the eyes of Aragorn, and she said: ‘Wish me joy, my liege-lord and healer!’ And he answered: ‘I have wished thee joy ever since first I saw thee. It heals my heart to see thee now in bliss.’

Still, the two evils remain distinct because sin is a spiritual and moral evil and disease a physical one. Sin makes us guilty while disease makes us miserable. We thus need grace for our sin but mercy and healing for our diseases. 21

We are all broken, that is how the light gets in.

In 'Beauty and the Beast,' it is only when the Beast discovers that Beauty really loves him in all his ugliness that he himself becomes beautiful. In the experience of Saint Paul, it is only when we discover that God really loves us in all our unloveliness that we ourselves start to become godlike. Paul's word for this gradual transformation is sanctification, and he sees it as the second stage in the process of salvation. Being sanctified is a long and painful stage because with part of themselves sinners prefer their sin, just as with part of himself the Beast prefers his glistening snout and curved tusks. Many drop out with the job hardly more than begun, and among those who stay with it there are few if any who don't drag their feet most of the way. But little by little—less by taking pains than by taking it easy—the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person. God does most of it. The end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life.