Friday, July 17, 2015

Mark 6:53-56

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Healing

Freedom found me in the hospital lobby. I got off the elevator, and for the first time in days I felt free. Perhaps it was because I was myself, and it felt great.

I had visited a patient, listened, shared an observation or two I thought helpful and prayed with gratitude and hope, speaking with was in my heart and what was playing in the depths of those with whom I spoke.

I felt my true worth, which is to be and bear a word of blessing and meaning amid the craziness of living and the unpredictability of illness—healing my own soul in the process, freeing me from any need to please or prove something to someone.

I felt a flow of life from a place deep within that naturally appears when it is not stopped by anxieties about tomorrow or the need to measure up to some external standard or expectations you place on yourself.

This connection with self was at the same time connection with something beyond me, something that is pleased to be expressed in and through me, a Source, a Spring that is fresh and alive, that brings a cool blue happiness not caused by any external event.

There is an awareness of being in tune, in time, perfect rhyme and rhythm with the Life that is pleased to live in and through you. There are no wants, no need for hopes for something more because you already know and have the More that the heart wants.

Our basic human problem is our sense of separation from the Life and Love that is our Source, the Mystery who wants to live in and through us. Anxieties and hopes take us from the goodness of NOW, moving us out of sync with the flow of life and laughter, joy and our natural goodness that dwells within as our truest nature, which seeks expression through us.

But this cannot be expressed when worries about performance, anxieties about tomorrow or guilt over yesterday blocks the flow of our truest self, the self that is the expression of the Great Self, of whom we each are a unique and irreplaceable expression.

This is the healing that Jesus brings … or at least brings to me.

In total freedom, he loves we who wonder if we shall ever know a love that truly sets free. Knowing the Love in him, anxieties grow quiet, fears fade, guilt becomes irrelevant. The flow of Life in him sweeps through us and carries us into the joy of knowing who we are and for what we are made.

Little wonder people begged to touch and be touched by him. They wanted the exquisite healing that comes ... even in hospital lobbies.

Pr. David L. Miller