Healing

Dear friends,

Both Simon and I seem to be suffering from a string of minor injuries this week -- Simon’s from the fact that he now runs fast enough that his reflexes can’t keep up with his clumsiness, and mine from various aches and slow-healing bruises. I guess we’re both getting older…

Nonetheless, we’re in what I’d call more or less perfect health. And yet we STILL need constant healing, we still rely constantly on God’s ongoing gift of life. Now imagine those of us who are truly hurting, or are even fighting for our lives. Healing isn’t some occasional thing, a special gift we only need on special days. It’s something that all of us need all of our days, and something that will become an acute, critical need for each one of us at some point in our lives.

The passage for this week from Acts is all about healing, about God’s power to heal and to forgive sins. This is the name and the nature of Jesus-- to bring healing to all God’s children, even those who “rejected the Holy and Righteous One.” By putting our faith in that same Jesus, a couple of things happen:

1- We see Christ’s handiwork in all those who heal. We hold up nurses, doctors, counselors, friends, neighbors, as doing holy work. Every heart that has been prompted to extend healing to another person is a heart that has been touched by Jesus.

2- We ourselves are empowered to be healers. Through our faith we offer restoration, both to ourselves and to others, both by medical intervention and by the power of prayer.

Jesus’ power to heal is seen throughout the gospels as proof positive of his identity as the Lord of Love and the Son of God. Millenia later, by putting our faith in his name, in his nature, we can still help bring healing to the most profound wounds of body and spirit -- and we bring his presence and his spirit to soothe even when healing does not come.

May healing be in your heart, through your hands, and on your lips all this week, as a blessing you both give and receive.

Peace and joy,
Andrew

Irrepressible

Dear friends,

I noticed the dandelions for the first time today! I know they’re supposed to be this miserable weed, but they are some of my favorite wildflowers (and this time of year, when they’re still tender and just-grown, they make an amazing salad with the right dressing…)

There’s something about the bright, irrepressible nature of dandelions that delights me. They are bountiful, spreading explosively, their bright yellow flowers and then their soft fluff balls both supremely delicate and also utterly unbreakable-- have you ever tried to rid a yard of dandelions? I have. I failed.

I think the way I feel about dandelions is how Jesus felt about another soft, yellow-flowered, edible weed; the mustard plant. Only, mustard plants are like dandelions that can grow to be head-high bushes! But like dandelion, mustard was, and still is in many places, a weed that was occasionally cultivated to be eaten but which mostly spread itself wild, taking over cultivated fields and thorny ditches alike.

The Kingdom of Heaven spreads like mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32; Matthew 13:31-32, Luke 13:18-19).  It’s like a dandelion fluff ball -- one puff of wind, of Spirit, and it’s spreading and taking root all willy-nilly, and no amount of effort can stamp it out.

I see wild clumps of the Kingdom sprouting up all over the place. In the middle of the saddest news story, I’ll see evidence that indeed every heart on earth has a preference for, an inclination towards, Christ’s way of loving peace-- even if some hearts have been hardened against Christianity. We are part of something that cannot be eradicated, Good News that will always be welcome.

May the fragile, unstoppable, and totally irrepressible nature of the dandelion be a reminder this Easter season of our victory in Christ.

Grace and peace,
Andrew

The Power of Forgiveness

Dear friends,

Last evening I read an interview that literally brought me to tears. It’s natural to wonder how we would behave under the worst circumstances, whether we would stand by our friends in the face of danger or our faith in the face of persecution. Well, it’s hard to imagine worse circumstances than being imprisoned on death row for 30 years for a crime you did not commit.

And yet Ray Hinton found peace, and found the ability to forgive. He speaks honestly about the hell he was put through, and about the racist people who put him there; he calls it like he sees it, and yet he is big enough and wise enough and blessed enough by God and the mother who raised him to find life and joy in forgiving his enemies.

I’m sure Ray Hinton’s faith, his view of God and heaven and hell, isn’t exactly the same as mine. But I challenge you to read his interview and not come away certain that he has been truly filled by the Spirit. What a testimony.

May grace and peace and the might of Christ’s forgiveness be with all of us,
Andrew

Facing the Darkness

Dear friends,

The theme for this week, the fourth week in Lent, is “Me & You & Darkness in View” -- and invites us to honestly take stock of the negative side of life. And there’s no side more negative, or more ever-present, than death. Nobody likes to talk about it, but as part of our Lenten season of taking a hard, fresh look at life, there’s no way we can avoid confronting the reality of death.

So I was blessed to come across a devotional written by Mariah Martin, an ICU nurse who has already seen more death firsthand than I will in my entire life. She writes from experience and from faith in a way that I found to be very powerful:
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Death. We don’t like to talk about it.

The word itself has a negative connotation, sometimes. At a recent funeral service I attended, death was even referred to as “the enemy.” We avoid it at great emotional and financial cost; we deny it as long as we can; we fight it until the last breath.

Yet it happens to all of us.

As a nurse, I have learned firsthand that death is not something that can be bypassed. I work in an intermediate care unit where most of our patients are very sick. When the hospital volunteer drops off the newspaper in the morning, it is not uncommon for one of the nursing staff to pick it up, flip to the obituaries and scan the list for familiar names, patients that we have cared for. We wrestle with death every day.

My wonderful mother is a hospice nurse. In her work, she walks even more closely with death. Her patients are past the point of struggling against it. There is no elaborate game of chess — this treatment played against that symptom. Instead there is presence, comfort, adjustment and a constant evaluation of what is important in this moment.

A few years ago, when I shadowed my mom at work for a day, I was moved by the calmness and reassurance with which she alleviated the concerns of both patients and family members. I felt nothing remotely close to an enemy as I quietly followed her on her visits.

I noticed the joy felt in small things. A man who was utterly content to sit with his cat and overjoyed to see his cat again after returning from a doctor’s appointment.

I saw the commitment of a husband as he cared for his wife, even though she could not remember the meals he had served her a few hours before.

I saw the closeness of family as they drew together near the end, holding each other, telling stories, simply being close.

Yes, death is painful. We are never quite ready to say goodbye to someone we love. There is often something that seems unfinished; some event they should have made it to, or some achievement they should have been granted. And it is important to let ourselves mourn this loss, to let our hearts yearn for more time.

But there is no question that we will die, so trying to outrun or dodge death is futile.

I have seen families hang on so tightly to a breathing body that they fail to realize that the person they are trying to hang on to is already gone. They plead to nurses and doctors to intervene in every way; to eke out even a few more days or a few more minutes. All too often we confuse “being alive” with truly living.

We will all die, but we each get to choose our own response to this fact.

If we honestly believe that this life in our human bodies is merely a stop on our journey, why do we fear leaving it so much? Celebrate the life that has been lived. Remember the moments that have been shared, but do not cling to something that was never meant to be eternal in the first place.

I am young, but I have entered a profession that reminds me daily that I am not invincible, and neither is modern medicine. I see patients who try to battle with death, and I see patients who walk toward it in peace.

I hope that I can be one of the latter: not eager for death, but not afraid of it. Instead, simply confident in the mighty hands that hold our entire existence in their palms, and trusting in the great love that will carry us home.
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Mariah’s vision of peace and confidence in the face of eternity is, to me, the presence of God in the midst of the darkness. May that presence and that vision always be with us, especially as we take the time this season to think honestly about the end of our lives.

Grace and peace,
Andrew

So Much Money!

Dear friends,

Sometimes I look out at the town around me and I’m struck by the huge amount of wealth that I see every day. How many millions of dollars worth of cars, buildings, and property pass under our eyes in a single trip past the mall? And it’s even more striking when you visit a large city, when you can take in many trillions of dollars worth of stuff at a single glance.

I think that’s something Jesus must have felt as he finally arrived at Jerusalem, as “he looked around at everything” (Mark 11:11), taking in the sights. It was a mighty city, filled with stone walls and grand plazas, with the most beautiful walls and the most bustling plaza being at the Temple. And at some point it was all too much for Jesus, and as related in this week’s gospel passage (John 2:13-22) he cleared the temple court of all the merchants selling animals and changing money, saying “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

There are a lot of reasons why Jesus cleared the temple. It was an important religious, economic, and political act, and at its heart it told the people of Jerusalem that you can’t buy God. You can’t just throw money at sacrifices and fancy buildings and expect everything to be OK. Without justice, without peace, without a faith that worships God who lives in the human heart all the wealth in the world is just a hindrance.

So if you find yourself noticing all the riches that surround you, take a moment to think on the much greater wealth that is the Spirit of Christ. There is a place for marketplaces, for malls and stock markets, but that place is not in the court of our temple, it is not where they can block the way for the poor and the foreigner to come to God. It is good that we have built and crafted so much, but all of it is worthless if we don’t have love.

May an uncomfortable awareness of how our society spends its money pester and pursue each of us this week.

God’s grace be with you all,
Andrew