Harboring Our Hurts – Sunday, August 31, 1952
No doubt the course of history has many times been altered because someone has had his feelings hurt. There are some classic examples that suggest themselves, one such at the siege of Troy with Achilles sulking in his tent. But for every such that has been publicly cited, there are millions more where the lives of people have been blighted, some seriously and some superficially, because someone has had hurt feelings.
It is true that there are thoughtless people; cruel people; inconsiderate people; blunt, undiplomatic, roughshod people who often do things the wrong way and who often deal with men the wrong way. Men being as they are, imperfect as they are, so long as we brush up against them, sometimes we are going to have our feelings hurt, even when others don’t know they have hurt us.
There isn’t one of us who hasn’t been hurt, intentionally or otherwise. But if too easily we assume a martyr’s role, if we nurture and magnify our hurts far beyond their original stature or intent, if we let our lives be blighted, if we withdraw ourselves from fellowship and from activity, we do serious damage to ourselves, our families, our friends, and to the causes we might have served. We have learned that we recover from certain kinds of surgery much sooner if we are active and, on our feet, and perhaps we should long since have learned that we can cure hurt feelings much sooner if we don’t nurse them too long, if we don’t sulk an unreasonable time in our tents. We can’t stop the course of life or of living just because someone has hurt us.
Life goes on whether we go with it or not and sitting aside in hurt silence when there are things to be done is one unfortunate way of letting life waste away. We commend to all these words from an author unidentified: “In the very depths of your soul dig a grave; let it be as some forgotten spot to which no path leads; and there in the eternal silence bury the wrongs which you have suffered.
Your heart will feel as if a load had fallen from it, and a divine peace come to abide with you.” We do ourselves great damage if unduly we harbor our hurts. And we shall find that many of them can better be healed out in the open and on our feet, as can some wounds and some surgery, by not languishing too long in injured inactivity.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station KS L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, August 31, 1952, 11:00 to 11:30 a.m., Eastern Time. Copyright, 1952
__________________________________________
August 31, 1952
Broadcast Number 1,202