Aliel Cunningham

What bitter things in your life need God’s healing touch?

Rosh Hashanah was celebrated all over the world this month – A celebration of the Jewish New Year. One of the traditions that often accompanies this celebration is the custom of eating apples dipped in honey. The apples remind us of our first home in the Garden of Eden and can also symbolize the fullness of the year ahead and the honey is a picture of the desired sweetness and favor from God in the days to come.

This festival celebrates newness in life! Like a new day dawning, we all need those spaces where we are invited to “start anew” this race of life we have been running. A place where we can put on new shoes that are not bogged down with the mud of yesterday’s mistakes. A place where we are given a clean start to run with endurance the race laid out before us. At this key moment of starting afresh, this Jewish festival focuses not just on looking ahead to the new things to come, but also taking serious look back to consider what needs to be released, cut off, put away, forgiven, repented of or let go so that our load is lightened and we are not hindered by last year’s bitter things as we move forward into the freshness of this “now” moment.

Too often when we look back over our past years, there is a bitter taste in our mouth. Bitter words regretted, bitter scenes replayed, bitter loss or disappointments relived… Everyone you meet today has known this bitter taste when looking back on their past days. Unspeakable loss and regret entered the human story that fateful day in the Garden of Eden when the Enemy of our souls tempted Eve and she ate and Adam also in defiance of God’s word. From that moment, sin shattered our relationship with God and distorted our vision of ourselves and one another. Our understanding of the world and our place in it became dim and warped. We even forgot our own names and tasted the bitterness of wondering without a true home.

The story of how we came to taste bitterness in the world is a story that is told in a myriad of ways around the world, but in every culture and in every language, the theme of the bitterness of losing our home and our true human identity is present. The experience of tasting bitterness and sorrow has become a defining characteristic of what it is to be human. But the full accounting of the story does not end there. The true stories goes on to include the word of reversal and hope that God spoke on that fateful day in the Garden. He said that truly bitter things would come because of our decision to try to live outside of His boundaries and design, but He also promised to send one that would crush the head of the Serpent that plotted against us would be crushed and later on He spoke of one day that the bitterness of death itself would finally die.

There is a story about bitter disappointment and bitter words that is often repeated in scripture as both a warning and an encouragement. The story begins and ends in sweetness. The story is is found in Exodus 15 and the story begins in gladness. The chapter opens with a song of victory, praise, and thanksgiving exulting in God’s power and faithfulness to deliver the Israelites out of the hands of one of the largest armies in the world at that time – the Egyptian army. Miriam speaks for all the Israelites when she sings, “ You will bring your people in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance—the place, Lord, you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary, Lord, your hands established. ‘The Lord reigns for ever and ever.’”

The Israelites sound full of confident trust in their God. But 3 short days later as Moses and the Israelites travel into the desert looking for water and a place to camp, they arrive at the shores of a place that means “bitterness” in Hebrew, “Marah”, because the water there was bitter and not good for drinking. Here in the heat and thirst, we discover how quickly their offering of praise and their confident boasting in God has soured on their lips and given way to grumbling and complaining. Where was God now? There was a bitter edge to their questioning, “what are we to drink”? The underlying questions are easy to guess – Does God even care about us? Is He able to provide for us in a land where there is no water? Did He deliver us out of the Egyptian’s hands only to abandon us in the desert?

How often have you found yourself in their shoes? Just days after a triumphant victory, you find ourselves asking bitterly, “God, where are you?” When you find yourself in the wilderness with nothing visible to sustain you, do you begin to doubt God’s goodness and His promises to always be with you? There are places in all of our lives where we feel like we have been in the wilderness a long time waiting for God’s provision. These are the ‘testing’ places. The place where our true beliefs about God and about ourself begins to surface. Is there any distrust, unbelief, bitter disappointment still wounding your heart and distancing you from others? Allow God to bring it to the surface so that He can heal the deep wounds that have bitter roots and bring sweetness there.

God used the bitter waters of Marah to reveal the bitterness in the Israelites heart so they could be healed. In that same situation, Moses responded with a completely different attitude than the Israelites had. Instead of grumbling in anger and fear, he responded by crying out to the Lord with heart of dependent trust and the Lord answered his cries. God showed Moses a piece of wood to throw into the bitter waters that they might become sweet. This piece of wood becomes a significant foreshadowing of the cross where Jesus would willing lay down his life and shed his blood to turn our own bitter poisonous waters of sin and shame into the sweet waters of eternal life with Him. Through the cross we experience the greatest exchange of bitter for sweet when we exchange the bitterness of trying to run our own lives for the sweet surrender of putting our trust fully in the One who has loved us more deeply than we will ever know.

If you to name the bitter waters in your life, what name would you give them? The bitter waters of distance in a once-close friendship, The bitter waters of divorce, of loss, an unfulfilled dream, or of a life-changing tragedy, and most of us have tasted the bitter salt tears of death itself suddenly taking a loved one from our side. Know this, that in every bitter situation you have ever walked through God has seen your tears and has been with you in the midst of it. He is with you even now, but we have to choose whether we will turn toward Him or away from Him.

Every time we experience one these crucial “testing points” in our lives we can respond in one of these two ways – We can respond as the Israelites did, pulling back from the Lord, in fear and distrust and allowing bitterness and cynicism to take root in our heart or we can respond as Moses did and cry out to the Lord in our desperate situation with a heart that trusts that He will hear us and respond in miraculous and healing ways that turns our bitter situation into something sweet. Psalm 34:8 says, “O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.”

Whatever bitter things you have in your life or heart right now, bring them to the Lord and declare in faith His divine exchange of bitter things for sweet because of the cross of Jesus Christ. In our own family, we exchanged bitter words and estranged relationships for sweet reconciliation. In my own life, I exchanged bitter sorrow over the loss of my long time home base in West Virginia and community in Lithuania for sweet new beginnings in Colorado. What is it you have lost? What bitter tasting thing in your life or your heart do you need the Lord to heal by exchanging it for His sweet presence and provision. Nothing is too difficult for Him and no situation is beyond His grace and help in time of need.

At the end of the story of the Moses and the Israelites at the waters of Marah, we read these words of hope, “…I am the LORD, who heals you.” (Exodus 15:26b) God desires not just to change your circumstances, but to heal your very soul.

Will you let Him come close to you and heal the bitterness in the waters of your soul and allow His fresh, life-giving waters to flow in and taste of the sweetness of His love for you that never runs dry.

Featured Resource – Bitter Water and Sweet Wood Devotional by Steve Rodeheaver