“O God, my soul is weary and broken and you are healing the broken places through the slow application of your word.”

I prayed that, writing in my journal, while praying through the first few lines of Psalm 61. It reminded me of a story I read about Tom Brady’s “body man”. Because he can afford it, Brady has a kind of personal coach who understands his body’s unique strengths and weaknesses, and works after games and workouts to get him ready for the next opportunity to play.

The article related how this therapist immediately goes to work on say, a strained calf, after a practice. He knows precisely what to do as Brady gets older to help him continue to perform at an elite level. Perhaps this isn’t all that unusual, but because of Brady’s unprecedented success as an NFL quarterback, it gets a lot of attention.

Restoring the Sore Places

As I prayed through Psalm 61, I could sense the Spirit of God through the word of God restoring the sore places of my soul. I could sense this taking place slowly, like a strained muscle being expertly massaged to restore it to usefulness. And I knew that this was happening not just so that I could be more comfortable and have an enjoyable Friday. But like the work of Brady’s body man, God was restoring me to wholeness through his word, so that I could get back to serving in God’s strength and not my own.  

This reflection is not just a challenge to read the Bible more. Hardly. Rather, it’s to be reminded that our meditation on scripture is how we meet God. It’s how we listen to and follow Jesus.

The benefits of the Christian life are not abstracted from Jesus. The restoration we need doesn’t come as a spiritual product we “purchase” by our time in God’s word. Rather, it comes “in Christ” because it is “in him” that we experience these benefits. Let me explain.

According to John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John is talking about Jesus himself, the pre-incarnate Christ. He is THE Word. No matter where we read from God’s word, in a real sense it is the words of Jesus. There we encounter him personally, even when praying from an Old Testament book like the Psalms.

We are not just reading an example of ancient prayer, we are directly encountering the living Christ. So, rather than a casual glance, slowly praying through one of these Psalms is like looking an old friend in the eye over a long breakfast. It’s not just a casual wave or worse, a brush off from a total stranger.

Jesus knows my weaknesses and griefs and hurts and sin. When I read and pray through a text slowly, he goes to work, restoring the sore places, not just so I’ll be more comfortable, but to return me back onto the field to which he has called me to serve in his strength.