Bring Your Broken Heart to the One Who Named the Stars

Bring Your Broken Heart to the One Who Named the Stars

Posted on by Michele Morin

Whenever I travel, and often even when I simply open my email, I encounter the stories of people who are carrying heartache, managing loads unimaginable to me. I’m not a trained counselor, and my gifts don’t even lie in that direction, so I’m usually at a loss for words. And really, words are not the point for the one whose heart is broken.

Often, a listening ear is what’s needed, a quiet landing place for the whole story. Psalm 147:3-4 assures me that God is the One who hears—and he also heals.

He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars;
    he gives to all of them their names”

God doesn’t run out of patience with our long-winded grief or apply hasty bandages to our hurt feelings. He has the long leisure of eternity to work out our heartache according to his will, knowing the best outcome.

God doesn’t run out of patience with our long-winded grief or apply hasty bandages to our hurt feelings. He has the long leisure of eternity to work out our heartache according to his will, knowing the best outcome.

With both goodness and power, God alone can attend to your broken heart with intricate precision and extravagant grace. Elisabeth Elliot’s summary of the truth rings with hope:

If you are brokenhearted today, remember it’s the same One who numbers the stars and calls them by name who can heal your heart.”

Bring today’s heartache to the One who named the stars.

Holding You in the Light,

“If you are brokenhearted today, remember it’s the same One who numbers the stars and calls them by name who can heal your heart.” ~Elisabeth Elliot

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Published by Michele Morin

Michele Morin is a Bible teacher, writer, reader, and gardener committed to the truth that women can become confident Christ-followers and students of God's Word. She has been married to an unreasonably patient husband for thirty-plus years, and together they have four married sons and a growing fleet of adorable grandchildren. Michele loves hot tea and well-crafted sentences, poems that stop her in her tracks, and days at the ocean with the whole family. She laments biblical illiteracy and advocates for the prudent use of “little minutes.” She blogs at Living Our Days, and you can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

30 thoughts on “Bring Your Broken Heart to the One Who Named the Stars”

  2. I love this devotion today, Michele! I’ve assimilated it myself and forwarded to some others. I thought I’d send you a slice of the Milky Way from a couple of years ago.

    ❤️jb

    

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  3. ‘words are not the point for the one whose heart is broken.’

    Thank you for sharing this important truth, Michele. Too often we feel like we need to fill in the blanks or wrap everything up in a bow.

    It doesn’t work that way.

    Like

  5. A companion verse posted on my fridge has been helpful following the death of my husband:

    Ps 34:18 “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirt.”

    I’m so glad God does not run out of patience with me or apply hasty bandages! Thanks for your message.

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  7. I’m not very good at empathy. I am a “how can we fix it” person – and I am learning how to listen, how to hug, how to let dear friends walk through their grief at their’s and God’s pace. If God is generous with me for granting me the time needed, the do-overs – and grow me at my pace, then it is even more important I learn to respond to those suffering challenges who move through them at their own pace, especially grief. As a word person, that my love language doesn’t often heal, it is even more important that I become fluent in all the love languages. So many good truths in your post – affirming one on which God has been tutoring me, though I am an awkward pupil.

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    1. Oh, ME TOO! I can remember when I actually thought that if I could write the exactly right words in a note to a hurting person that I could chisel away at some of their pain—or if they just knew the right theology they could think the right thoughts about their loss and it would heal faster.
      WE HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN!

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  8. ‘So appreciate that statement about God not applying hasty bandages to our hurts. In the past I’ve struggled with guilt when–in spite of prayer and striving toward Philippians 4:8 thinking–I still experienced ongoing disappointment, emotional pain, and a wounded spirit. I thought as a Christian I should be ready to “rejoice always,” soon after a hurtful event. How comforting to realize “He has the long leisure of eternity to work out our heartache according to his will, knowing the best outcome.” That working out may not happen today or tomorrow, but we can be assured, the day will come when all sorrow, all suffering, all discouragement will end. Hallelujah! (And thank you, Michele!)

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    1. We won’t escape this life without a good measure of sorrow, but it changes everything when we remember that we’re not alone in it, and God who knows our frame and remembers that we are dust leans into our sadness and hears our hearts.

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  9. Our God is such a personal God! Not only does He know each of us by name, because He knit us together in our mother’s womb, He also knows each star in the universe by name. We can trust our details to Him!

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  10. At first glance, it seems like the one who knows the stars is far away from my own personal problems. But his knowledge of the stars and their names shows how vast he is. He is more than able to care care of my needs. And the fact that such a great God knows and ministers to me is a wonder and a comfort.

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  11. I love that picture of the One who named the stars and keeps any from missing. He is able to carry our pain and loss.

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  14. A broken heart is something only our God can heal. And I am so very grateful He does. Beautiful and powerful reminder in that EE quote.

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