Reflections on Healing

10 June 2010

Lydeard Hill, The Quantocks, June 2010

The Gospel accounts can do us, and indeed Jesus, no favours by only highlighting the success stories: the revival of the dead, the miracle cure, the blind receiving their sight, the lame leaping for joy and the dumb speaking again. 

But what of the others who were sick?  Surely not everyone who came into contact with Jesus was healed?  Well I guess it all depends upon one’s understanding of the term healing. If by healing we mean cure – no they weren’t, they couldn’t have all been cured otherwise there would have been no case to answer at the trial before the Sanhedrin.  The evidence would have been so stacked in favour of Jesus that the case would not have even come to court.

 So there must have been a degree of mystery about the miracles and indeed the very strong possibility that not everyone was cured.  However, on the other hand everyone may have been healed.  That is if by healed we mean given fresh insight, a new sense of worth, purpose and dignity; or given the opportunity to begin again, evident in the sparing of the woman caught in adultery; or given the opportunity to reflect upon previously held beliefs, evident in the life of post Damascus Road Paul; or given the opportunity to take on board new relationships evident in the words of Jesus on the cross as he addressed Mother Mary and the beloved disciple.

 Well being, wholeness, a freedom to be what God has made us to be are probably nearer the mark when we describe the healing that Jesus offers us. 

By being so focussed on the high profile, the highly unusual event of dramatic miracle we lose sight of, the less publicised, seemingly more mundane healing that takes place every day, in all sorts of places and with all sorts of people. That form of healing doesn’t hit the headlines; it isn’t as talked about.  But it will still have an impact not only on the healed but upon all those who come into contact with that person thereafter. The man who has come to terms with redundancy and can see God at work in an area of his life he’d never noticed before. The couple who fall in love again after their marriage had become little more than a function. The woman who finds real purpose in the care she gives. The teenager who can see that life is much more than an appearance. The church that no longer looks back with rose tinted spectacles to some imagined glorious past. The community that says there is much in store for us, however unlikely the prospect.

 Each and every one can find healing their pain,    consolation in their grief,companionship in their loneliness. In the predicaments we experience in the burdens we bear, the fears we face can find healing for ourselves.

 Thank God that there are millions upon millions of people desperate to make the best of life, anxious to do what is right, believers in goodness overcoming evil, grace being greater than godlessness  and love being all powerful

 We can look upon each other as companions on this sometimes lonely, frustrating, disappointing journey we call life.

 We can look upon each other as sharing the same tiny space called planet earth, as sharing a common purpose and as sharing the same fate.

 In so recognizing our lives are less lonely, more purposeful and filled with infinite possibilities.