Monday, September 3, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:24-25

He [Jesus] left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there; but he could not pass unrecognized. At once a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and came and fell at his feet.

Reflection

Our pains and burning need have two opposite effects. Either they isolate us as we shun human contact, or they move us beyond the narrow circle of self into a wider world of souls where the love that is God can pour from them into us.

Isolation is the soul’s great enemy. In our aloneness, we believe lies and imagine healing is impossible. Only in the appreciative gaze of love do we find ourselves and the healing for which we hunger.

None of us was created to be alone, cut off from others by illness or need, shame or despair, prejudice or angers. The devilish thing (truly evil) is that all these pains and so many others move us to hide and shun the light of human contact.

It often happens at the point of our greatest need. A loved one dies, a relationship injures, illness or depression saps our strength, and we think we are not fit to be out in public. We stop seeing, talking and touching even those we have known for years.

Alone, pain magnifies and isolates. I have seen it a thousand times following a death, a disappointment, a wounding incident.

We desperately need each other, for God intends us to be sacraments of the Love who is God, bearing healing grace and the oil of kindness. It flows in normal human exchange as we flee our aloneness to touch and listen, to speak and laugh, to be blessedly human with each other.

Healing begins as the Love who is God--and our deepest, truest selves--flows in common conversation and daily care.

It was need that moved the woman beyond the prison of her fears to seek healing for her daughter. In isolation, disease and dread of the future were her closest companions. They are soul-killing company, but she fled them for the sake of life.

Just so, the pains that imprison human hearts are either barriers to wholeness or the bridge into the land of grace and healing.

She moved from isolation to the feet of Jesus, to the soul of all healing and grace. No longer was she alone, no longer a prisoner, no longer limited to her own resources. Her pain and need brought her to the place where Love might do its holy work.

Pr. David L. Miller