Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.
Another healing story. Another story of someone’s faith that cured them. This time, a woman with twelve years of hemorrhaging. I am extremely glad for the woman that was healed, who had sufficient faith that she only needed to touch his cloak to be healed. I’m happy that Jesus, in response to her faith, healed what twelve years of doctors couldn’t. And, given where I am in my world, it’s a growing edge for me.
Yes, I believe Jesus could heal. Yes, I hope to have the faith that it’s true. And My sick loved one has a disease that I have never ever heard of a miraculous recovery, faith or no. So I read the stories of healing, and I’m always a little miffed. What about my sick one?
It’s interesting that my self-absorbed previous self never ever thought about all of the instances, all of the parents who’d cry out in deep faith, and be disappointed in an apparent lack of response. It’s as if I’m the very first person who’s had seeming unanswered prayers. How dumb is that?
I believe that this sort of personal loss and anguish that occur to people of faith has caused at least one family member in my life to turn from God entirely. Hearing stories of God’s love, or Jesus’ healing while experience hate, harm, illness or death is a cold irony. How does anyone stay connected to that love and healing, when it seems it’s being withheld?
Maybe it’s about seeing and knowing that it’s not an all-or-nothing equation. God’s healing and love aren’t either all-present or not-at-all present. About seeking and seeing the moments of love and healing, that may be episodic, may not be permanent, but are there nonetheless.
Yesterday, I had one of those moments of healing and love with my sick love one. I don’t know if it’s new medicine, or a reduction of harmful self medication, but I enjoyed 90 minutes of uninterrupted blissful bonding time with my loved one. We sat on the balcony of the apartment, and I groomed their hair. We talked, although it didn’t always make sense, and included a flood of emotions and sentiments from their mixed-up brain.
There’s no chance this would have happened a week, or a month ago. And it might not happen again. But for those 90 minutes, we both were healed a little bit. And I’m certain they felt my love. I know I felt God’s.
I also know that that little moment of healing and peace will carry me far. It restored my personal capacity and resiliency banks. Not in a settling way, but in a way that reflects that God’s grace is ever-present, maybe that’s the miraculous cure. It’s not that my loved one is immediately cured, permanently, or else there is no God and God’s love. That all-or-nothing thinking absolutely makes people lose their faith. Rather, God’s healing and love come right when we need it.
This morning, I’m thinking about having faith that the healing and grace and love will happen, with or without a miraculous cure. How the faith shows up in believing it will happen, and with that faith, it absolutely will. So maybe my faith did make me well. Without the framework of faith and healing, that experience may have been incidental and fleeting. Nice, but signifying nothing. Instead, I absolutely see it as a moment of God’s healing, for both of us. For that context, I am grateful.
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