What can we offer?

Healing

There is such a demand for healing these days. Of course, the biggest demand if you watched the news would be from COVID-19. The number of cases world-wide are staggering. The number of cases in Halton are concerning. Here are the stats that I pulled off of Halton’s website early this morning:

476 cases to date. 226 recoveries — less than half so far.

And of course, the most concerning number — 20 deaths — and 11 of them came from exposure in institutional settings.

Healing

Healing is needed so much in our world today.

However, we can’t forget that there are other types of healing needed today — not just from COVID-19 — but from all sorts of issues — some physical, some emotional, some psychological, some spiritual — in many ways there’s no end to the need for healing in our lives.

Our prayer list contains 39 names at the moment. I’m both happy that we have such an extensive prayer list — it shows how much we rely on the healing power of prayer; and I’m concerned about what it means for the world — if a congregation of our size has that length of list (please don’t take names off because I’ve said that — I actually think given the state we’re in, there should be more names on the list.)

How do we offer healing?

As a congregation, we’ve been good over the years in offering healing to others — or at least helping them heal — by offering rides, bringing over meals, spending time with people who need to share their hopes and fears about what is going on in their lives. And now it feels like some of that has needed to stop — or at least stop in the way that we used to do it, and now we need to find another way.

Our ability to be physically present has been so impacted, that we might begin to wonder what it is that we could offer another person who needs healing.

What did Peter and John offer?

Peter and John had a similar dilemma. What could they possibly offer the man lame from birth? Remember, they were disciples of Jesus who had been commanded at one point to:

Luke 10:4-6

Luke 10:4–6 NRSV

Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.

It is no wonder that when they got to the temple that day, they had nothing to give the man who was lying there — begging.

Yet, they did have something.

Acts 3:6 NRSV

But Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”

They had the power of prayer — the ability to ask for something in the name of Jesus.

What can we offer?

We too might feel initially that there is nothing we can offer at the moment to someone we want to help. Our words might start out something like this:

“I have no way of coming to help you,”

For that is true — for our safety, for the safety of the person we desperately want to help, and for the safety of our community — we can’t be present as we normally would be.

However our words could continue like this:

“but what I can do for you I will do; I will pray for you — pray for your healing — pray that God will touch your life and that you will find peace.”

We know that our prayers aren’t always answered the way we want them to be — if they were none of this would be going on as I’ve been praying for this to stop for months now.

However, we do know that God touches the lives of people in ways we can’t even begin to imagine — and a lot of the way that God touches others’ lives is through our prayers.

In tomorrow’s email to you, there will be a booklet of prayers that I will have put together for healing during this time. I will also print out a number of copies of them and leave them in bags outside the door of the church, just like we did with the palm crosses. Starting tomorrow afternoon, you can pick up a booklet from the church if you wish.

Please use the prayers in the booklet to ask for healing for our loved ones, and the whole world — for that is what we can offer the world at the moment — and that is what is offered to us as well. For God’s gift of healing prayer, we give thanks. Amen.