Tag: healing

The Suffering of Christmas

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

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Christmas:  a time for joy and a time for cheer…  But, unfortunately, it is also a time of profound loneliness and a yearning of days gone by for many people.  A few years back, I received a call on Christmas Day.  One of my parishioners was stretching out to put the angel on top of the family Christmas tree, and fell over dead from a heart attack.  The family’s Christmas will never be the same again, a weird mix, a strange amalgam of both happiness and heartache.  Tragedy that occurs around the holidays makes all future holidays awkward and different.

I have also known folks who were expecting a juicy Christmas bonus, finding instead a pink slip and a surprise lay-off from their job.  Children of divorce probably know the strangeness of the holiday the most, being shuttled here and there obtaining more gifts than they need but more bitterness than they want.  For every one of us who look forward to Christmas Day, there is another who dreads facing another season with unpleasant memories of what happened and what could have been….

Whether Christmas is chiefly joyous for one or sorrowful for another, the bald fact of the matter is that we all suffer in some way.  Let me offer a definition/description of suffering for you to ponder:

Suffering occurs when someone or some circumstance acts against your will and damages either your body, mind, soul, spirit, or all/part of them, creating the great need for healing.

Suffering creates a portal, an opening to either love or hate.  It brings us to the point of decision:  We did not choose suffering; it chose us.  But the choice for healing is very much in our control.  Suffering is an event, maybe even extended over time, which will make us either bitter, or better – it’s your choice.

There are numerous people who will offer you a cup of bitterness, the sour wine vinegar which will dull the pain.  Jesus had such an offer while he hung on the cross, and he refused it.  Nothing was going to stand in the way of his full faculties experiencing the vicarious suffering for our sins.  Dulling the pain doesn’t bring healing; it only makes us forget for a time and just prolongs actual healing.

Instead, the wise choice is to take charge of your life and choose the hard path of healing.  There is a world of difference between the pain that is forced upon us, and the pain which we choose so that we become better and healthy.  The pain of violation must be followed with the pain of healing.

A major way you know your choice of healing is happening is when your heart and life open-up to love, when the shape of grace begins to mold your soul and brings a reception to people who benevolently wait to help with kind words and ways.  Your sight becomes different.  The world becomes brighter.  Decisions are motivated more by love than by protection.  There is the willingness to persevere and patiently complete the process of healing and see it through to a new maturity.  You cease trying to manipulate others and focus more on your own responses to people and situations.  Every day becomes a fresh opportunity to love God by serving others.

Because God is love, and we are created in the image of God, this means we were designed to receive and to give love.  We are love, as well.  To not love is to buck our inherent design from the beginning of time.  We are not just to grit our teeth and force-out loving words and actions; we are to tap into the originality of our souls and be love.  The great task of the Christian life is to awaken to who we really are, to become a whole person, complete and mature.  The only means for this to happen is through the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Jesus, our great professor in the faith, knows that suffering is a teacher.

Far too many persons are perplexed as to why they still struggle and hurt.  They have prayed.  They have read the Bible.  They have tried, time and time again.  Hurt and pain might and is very personal; but healing is communal – it demands more than our own efforts.  Unless we open ourselves to the love of others, and risk putting our souls on the line, we will not realize the peace we long for and the mending of our spirits.

The first step is speaking to someone who is safe, someone for whom you trust, and telling them where you are in your soul – not making yourself look better than you are, and providing a real picture of the state of your life – and, not diminishing the very real abuse which occurred against you by saying others have it harder than you.  In other words, be real.  Humility and honesty will always serve you well.

Yes, it’s Christmas.  How will you choose to deal with it?

Luke 5:17-26

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            Jesus came to this earth to forgive sin and transform sinners.  Today’s Gospel story has a paralyzed man brought to Jesus in an unorthodox way.  His two friends carried the man on a mat, but could not get close enough to Jesus to be noticed.  This was not about to stop the two friends.  They just took him to the roof, created a hole in it, and lowered the man right in front of Jesus!  Our Lord was impressed with their faith, healed the man, and said “My friend, your sins are forgiven.”
 
            There is a very important observation about this story that we need to notice:  the man was healed because of the faith of his friends.  Yes, that’s right.  Read the story again.  It was the faith of the two men in bringing their friend to Jesus that led to the healing and transformation.
 
            If this does not inspire, impel, and inform you to pray diligently by bringing your friends to Jesus in prayer I’m not sure what would move you.  Sometimes great miracles are not brought about by a lone person praying for his/her personal change but by believing people who do not give up in bringing their friend to Jesus.  Think of one person right now for whom God has laid him/her on your heart.  Pray today and every day until there is a breakthrough.  In the metaphorical sense, create a hole in the roof and place your friend in front of Jesus and watch what kind of healing and renovation of life he can affect.
 

 

            Healing God, I thank you for doing your good work of forgiving sins and transforming sinners in Jesus’ name.  I pray you will deliver my grandson from the scourge of epilepsy and give him a new life full of spiritual power through Jesus.  Amen.

Luke 8:40-56

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            Today’s Gospel lesson is a classic story of Christ healing a chronically ill woman of her suffering, and raising a deal girl back to life.  This is Jesus the Healer and Miracle Worker doing what he does so well – bringing new life to people.  What these accounts have in common with all of the other chronicles of Christ’s miracles is that they occur with Jesus as the object of faith.  It isn’t about the level of people’s faith, but about where that faith is placed.  Faith itself means nothing if it isn’t in Jesus.  Only Jesus can do the miraculous of healing, transforming, and saving people.
 
            In each healing narrative, the person’s need and desperation (poverty of spirit) were the necessary first steps on the road of faith.  Faith always begins with the acknowledgment of need.  You and I need Jesus.  If Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, he will do it.  If Jesus came to change lives, he will accomplish it.  If Jesus is the living Lord of the church, he will hear your humble and heartfelt petition.  So, pray!
 
            Come to Jesus, and pray.  Pray without ceasing.  Pray for your children, your friends, your neighbors, and your co-workers.  Pray for healing, and pray for deliverance.  I know there are people and situations in which it seems there is no hope, or that nothing will ever be different.  But Jesus is trustworthy, and he always keeps true to his mission.  All who come to Jesus receive a changed life – and that is what I bank on.
 

 

            Surprising God, you do amazing things in people’s lives.  You specialize in the impossible.  Work in my life to make me holy and set apart for you, to be a conduit of blessing to others here on earth until Jesus comes again.  Amen.

Mark 7:24-30

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            There are many times in our lives when not much happens until something becomes urgent.  A doctor, a preacher, or financial planner can tell us something until they are blue in the face, but it will not mean much without a profound inner sense that some sort of change needs to occur – that the way things are isn’t going to cut it any longer.
 
            Today’s Gospel lesson is a story of urgency.  Here is a Gentile Canaanite woman, a person who is about as far from God as one can get in the ancient world.  She was not concerned about appearances, etiquette, or any pretense to hide her pain; she cared about her daughter getting healed of her suffering.  So, she sought Jesus.  And the woman believed that Jesus was the answer to her daughter’s situation.  It was the dogged belief (pun intended) that Jesus will deliver.
 
            Grace is bestowed only to the humble that recognize the urgency of needing Jesus.  It is bestowed only in God’s good timing – not ours.  The real muster of a genuine faith is exemplified by a willingness to beg, and is demonstrated with perseverance in the face of the slimmest of odds.  A superficial reading of the story might lead us to think that Jesus’ initial response to the woman was elitist and aloof.  It seems to me that a better way of looking at it is that our faith will be tested to prove its authenticity.
 
            The woman displayed a raw, real, and persistent faith – the very faith that Jesus commended.  It makes me wonder how urgent I am in prayer.  I wonder what would happen if I prayed for one lost neighbor or relative every day with the same urgent persistence as the woman; or, if I begged God without giving up to heal my grandson’s epilepsy; or, if I persevered in prayer for revival.  Perhaps the real enemy of the Christian life is mediocrity and a false sense of acceptance that all is just fine the way it is – kind of like the Pharisees.
 

 

            Healing God, you are the hope of the church and of all who look to you in faith.  Please turn the world, and my world, upside-down with spiritual power that heals people of disease, depression, and demonic influence so that the kingdom of God breaks into all of life and does its transforming work in Jesus’ Name.  Amen.