Types

Yesterday's reading in Mark really stuck with me specifically the many different ways healing is experienced and enacted so far.  In the "physical" healings, Jesus has healed from a distance, he's healed by touching someone, another was healed by touching Jesus without him calling to her, and in the readings yesterday Jesus heals a deaf mute by sticking his fingers in the man's ears and touching his tongue and has a healing where it seems to have taken two stages.  Physical ailments have been healed and demons have been cast out.   But there are other healings too - people have been restored to community when they had been previously shunned, racial and societal boundaries have been broken down and hope has been restored.

There is much healing that needs to take place in our world today.  There are physical healings that are needed and are experienced.  There are healings that take place through what seems to be "natural" means but also ones that are far from "natural."  There are everyday ones and there are miracles and some that feel like a bit of each.  But there is much healing that we are also called to be a part of.  The racial divides and conscious and unconscious biases that we all carry, the fear of the "other" and the unknown, the divisions between Christian denominations and across different faiths.  There is brokenness in relationships in families and communities and organizations.  Healing is needed in so many places and can come in so many forms.

What I heard in the Gospel yesterday and throughout Mark (and Matthew for that matter too since I just finished reading that) is that the healing that came through Jesus and still today comes is wide and varied and there's nothing beyond the power of God to heal.  Mark 1:40 tells the story of a leper who comes to Jesus asking to be healed and he simply says, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."  That's my request of God tonight but even as I pray it, I know that God is calling me to also be part of the healing that can come in all its varied forms.