When You Feel Numb: Overcoming the Absence of Remorse
"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."
(Psalm 51:10)Numbness does not mean the light is gone. It means the heart needs warmth again.
Parable: The Sleeping Hedgehog and the Winter Sun
Deep in a quiet forest lived a small hedgehog who had built his home beneath a fallen tree.
When winter came, the forest grew cold and silent. Snow covered the ground, and the hedgehog curled tightly into a ball, sleeping through the long nights.
At first, when the morning sun touched the forest, the hedgehog would stir. The warmth reached him even beneath the snow.
But as the days passed, the cold grew thicker around his den. The hedgehog no longer noticed the sunlight above. The warmth was still there, but he had grown numb to it.
One morning, a gentle deer walked by and brushed the snow away from the fallen tree. A small beam of sunlight slipped through the branches and touched the hedgehog's nose.
Slowly, the hedgehog opened one eye.
The warmth had never disappeared.
He had simply been buried beneath the cold for too long.
Little by little, he stretched his legs, stepped outside, and felt the sunlight again.
And with each day in the light, the numbness faded.
Moral:
Even when the heart grows numb, the warmth of truth and light can awaken it again.
Even when the heart grows numb, the warmth of truth and light can awaken it again.