Summary: We switch on the television and see good sports spoiled by bad behaviour. We hear at work about the manager who has been cheating the company, and the husband who has been deceiving his wife. We open the newspaper and read about the person knocked down by the drunk driver and the sadistic attacks on the aged and the young. We travel on trains and see what the vandals have left behind. These events come close to our own door and sadness enters even into our own homes. Our lives are spoiled by wrong actions. A short, simple word for all this is sin. Sin constantly spoils our lives. <br><br> One famous writer has described our spoiled lives as reeds on the river bank that have been bruised by the current of sin that swirls around us. Isaiah was a man who believed in God. He lived before Jesus but wrote of Him, "a bruised reed He will not break." A bruised reed is a plant that has been hurt or crushed. How bruises bring hurt into our lives; lives that are for many at times a journey through a dark tunnel of depression. Some find themselves trapped in a cage of anxiety, and many families are severed through marital and financial problems. We have all been hurt by others who are selfish. We have all faced bitter disappointments at some time or other. We have all been through shattering experiences when it felt as if nobody cared. Yet we can remember - when we are honest with ourselves - our own unkind remarks. We cannot always blame the other person. We cannot always rest on our own convenient excuses. We need to face up to those wrong actions, those sins. <br><br> When we do this and look in the mirror of our own life, God assures us that there is no life that is so bruised and injured that it cannot be healed. <br><br> Matthew 11:28 states, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." <br><br> + Plus, listen to Adam Young singing "How Deep the Father's Love for Us"
