Do You Wish To Be Healed?

Heal verb 1. To make or become well or healthy again. 2. to cure (a disease) or mend, as a wound. Webster's New World Compact School and Office Dictonary, 1982.

On Friday evening of Revival, after a full day of services, workshops, singing, eating, gathering and talking, time came for a centering, for that inner work that helps us notice what's going on deep in our souls. We were given that gift of time at the prayer and healing service.

Scripture and songs and prayer led us to the core of the service. Instead of giving us a dictionary definition, Rev. Jonalu Johnstone prepared the way by explaining that "healing" means adjusting to a violent or wrenching change of circumstance. To heal means to adjust. And how do you know you're still healing? Because of a continued sense of dis-ease. The current of hurting, anger, tears, sadness, and distress, that rolls above and below the surface of our lives as we adjust to the new circumstance.

Do you wish to be healed?

Can you drag your ego, your self-righteousness, your pride out of the way so that God can pour in and heal?

Do you really wish to be healed?

Or does your "dis-ease" serve you in some way? Do you enjoy the distress because it makes you feel alive, worthy, right?

Do you really wish to be healed?

What are you willing to give up, throw out, die to, change to create the space you need to heal the dis-ease?

Once we were given a chance to examine our answers to these questions, we were invited to come to one of four ministers at the front of the chapel and quietly state our dis-ease, our trouble, our wrenching circumstance. And receive the gift of healing prayer.

There are few things as powerful as walking to someone to whom you know you can trust your soul and saying out loud the thing that's eating away at you, corroding your spirit. Kneeling or standing with that person as your spiritual partner. To have that partner, in empathy and compassion, lay hands on you, on your shoulders or head, with gentle, warm pressure. Then to hear the soft, fervent prayers wash over you. For your adjustment. For your healing. Believe me, the Holy Spirit is all over that.

Just a week after I returned from Revival, the minister's pastoral prayer at my own church asked that we not only pray for our own healing, but also look around and each day perform some small act of healing, of kindness, of compassion for someone else.

What adjustment are you struggling with today? Is there anything keeping you from giving up your dis-ease and opening up healing space?

May you take steps each day--either baby steps or long strides--toward spiritual health and wholeness. May it be so. Amen.