miracles.
I’ve been doing this Lenten Study on the disciple John … you know the one in DaVinci’s painting of the Last Supper that "could" be Mary Magdalene (according to the Code) ….
Anyway I came upon this great line in the study this week (yes I still procrastinate and leave things until the night before). It came out of this story after Pentecost, about Peter and John and this crippled beggar. Every day the beggar was brought to the temple gates where he begged for alms. Peter and John had no alms but instead healed the man.
Quite often we spend so much time ‘begging’ God for what we want and then getting mad when we don’t get it. What we want is a ‘holy enabler.’ (a God that will give us what we want when we want it so we can stay the same). But God has so much more in mind for us. What God wants is not to enable us but to heal us (make us all that He intends for us to be)
I thought it was pretty profound – not true to every person, every cry or every context. But it made me think if at times what I seek is a "holy enabler" not the God who wants to heal me, make me whole, so that I can be fully alive, fully present and fully all that He has called me to be.
Today I visited a very cool place — a place that brought all this alive actually. A place that is seeking to be part of this healing not this enabling. A place that is seeking to do so much more than write prescriptions and bandage wounds. A place that is helping heal wholistically: body, soul, mind and spirit. And it’s just around the corner from church, Mercy Children’s Clinic.
The Glory of God is man fully alive said St. Iranaeus. Fully alive. Fully present. Healing on all levels and Growing in all fronts. Not stuck and enabling.
Tonight I find myself so thankful that the miracles of healing didn’t stop with the deaths of the Jesus and the Apostles. I find myself so thankful that Jesus didn’t just heal 2000 years ago but Jesus still heals today. And in this, I find hope: hope for this world. hope for those I love. and hope for me.
Know what else I hope? I hope the Roman Catholic Church never stops canonizing Saints … it takes 3 miracles to be made a saint in the RC church. And I think we need all the reminders we can get in this mixed up world. Not so much the reminder that miracles still happen but more the reminder that Jesus does still indeed heal.
I wish He’d heal in my cold! I’m so over the stuffy nose, the tissues, the coughing, the medicine … I want to be well. and by the way that’s not begging, that’s whining.
I whine like that a lot also for myself and for friends.
After all the time I spent begging God to heal me, I looked up one day and found that he’d put me in a place in the world, and led me to people who could help me heal. Funny; apparently God can’t work until you actually want Him to. Amazing.