Collide.

The dictionary defines collision as "a crash in which two or more things or people hit each other."

There are two things that I know (first hand) about collisions.
(1) They are usually an accident.
(2) They almost always cause pain.

I was involved in a couple of car collisions in high school.  In one collision I was the driver.  I'd had my license for a whole fifteen days (yes, you read that right), and one rainy, Saturday morning, I pulled out in front of a car, and it collided with me.  It was going fast, and it hit me quick and hard.  It was a wreck.  I was a wreck! I never saw the car coming.  It was an accident, it was messy-  And it hurt.

The second collision took place about three weeks later (no, I'm still not joking).  This time, however, I wasn't the driver.  My mom was the driver this time.  And I was a passenger.  And this time a truck hit us and sent us spinning off of the highway and down a hill.  It hit us fast and it hit us really hard.  It was an accident as well, and it hurt just as bad as the first collision. 

Playing sports my whole life, I've been involved in several collisions of the body.  I was always pretty tough, and never minded knocking bodies around playing basketball.  I can also remember once, while playing catcher in coed softball, a man collided into me to try to cause me to drop the ball so that he would be safe at the plate (if anyone cares, I didn't drop the ball).  It was not an accident.  But it did hurt.

Collisions, whether intentional or not, almost always hurt.  Sometimes we are prepared for them.  Sometimes we are not.  Sometimes we can see them coming and we try to hold on tight and brace ourselves, knowing we are about to be collided into anyway.  But even when we can see them coming, very seldom can we stop them from happening.  Collisions come hard.  Momentum carries, and pain happens.
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There are two words that God has been using to teach me lately.  These words almost always stay on my heart.  My mind never stills, and I've found myself thinking about these two words daily for the last several months.  These two words are hurt and healing.

So, here sits hurt.  Hurt never really completely leaves, it just kind of lingers around.  It's an annoying visitor.  Some days hurt doesn't cause much of a scene.  It just hangs out.  It plops down in the recliner, grabs the remote control and a bag of chips, and makes itself at home.  And most days it sits around quietly.  For the most part you don't even know it's there.

But some days hurt is loud.  It has already arrived at the house before you even get out of bed.  It screams and it shouts and it runs rampant through the house.  And it makes a mess.  It pulls out trash and scatters it everywhere.  It strolls stuff around that has no business being out in the open and would be better off staying hidden.  Hurt just wrecks the place some days.

On the days that it sits quietly, you don't really want it there, but it isn't causing too much trouble so you just deal with it.  But on the days when it is loud, and out of control, and messy, and wrecking the place- you just can't do it by yourself.  And when you realize you can't do it by alone, you cry out for help, and in walks the Healer.

Except the Healer doesn't just "walk" in.  The Healer comes barreling through the front door like a wrecking ball.  The Healer comes through so powerfully and mightily that the hurt can't get out of the way fast enough before the Healer flat our collides with it.  The hurt never stood a chance!  Maybe the hurt never saw the Healer coming... Or maybe it did.  Maybe it knew the Healer was on the way.  Maybe the hurt could sense that the Healer would be here soon.  Maybe it heard the Healers footsteps as the Healer got closer and closer to the door.  Maybe the hurt ran towards the Healer just as fast as the Healer ran toward the hurt.  And if that's the case... what a beautiful collision. 

Pain? Oh yes, there's pain.  There's almost always pain when a collision occurs.  But it's a beautiful pain because the hurt and the Healer have collided with one another.  There they are, laying in a pile on the floor with their arms wrapped around each other, a tangled up mess, surrounded by the wreck that the hurt has caused.  But, praise God, the Healer is bigger and stronger than the hurt.  Oh, the hurt is big.  And it's powerful.  And it's life consuming.  But it can't compare to the Healer.  The Healer wraps up the hurt like a child.  The Healer starts to sit up and hold the hurt.  He wraps His arms around the hurt and as He holds it tighter and tighter, the hurt sinks into the arms of the Healer and it becomes smaller and smaller until it starts to disappear. 

It's a beautiful thing when the hurt and the Healer collide...