With Eyes to SEE - Becky Kiel, student in Parish Ministry

In August, a hawk hovered high over a racoon baked on the blacktop leading out of town. For racoons and for people, living and dying in this world is messy, often painful. 

Inside the physical therapy room, I lay spread eagle with the therapist pushing down on my bent knee.

“Does that hurt?”

Oh, yeah. She had found the source of the pain, not in my thigh as I felt it, not in my hip as the doctor surmised. The sharp, stabbing pain came out of the PSIS, a connecting joint in my lower back.

Pain is a part of being alive, woven into living and dying.

Now he [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. Luke 13:10-13

He called to her, spoke, and laid his hands on her. How often have we prayed for Jesus to step into our own lives with that healing touch? I can name right now family members and close friends with needs at least as great as that bent over old woman. Our small congregation’s prayer list currently has over 60 names, four times the number who were present recently on a slow summer day.  Injuries from falls and car accidents. Illnesses: cancer, stroke, undiagnosed ailments. Debilitating mental illnesses that stubbornly defy treatments. The need is so great!

That bent over woman was able to reach the synagogue while Jesus was still there! But those ancient folks might say I’m blessed to have a therapist with a set of stretches to bring relief. True enough, we are blessed with celebrating cancer survivors, with medications for strokes, with joint replacements. With many treatments that would have looked miraculous not long ago.

But that’s just not good enough.

After a September shower, a lilac lavishly replaces scorched brown leaves with new green ones. The lilac looks healthy again, transformed in just a week. Why doesn’t my back pain disappear that quickly?

We long for Jesus to step in and, with his touch, bring complete immediate healing. Like there’s a secret suspicion that God has got it wrong by ignoring our pain and suffering. Or that I got it wrong. If I prayed the right way, prayed harder, prayed more, my sick friends would be restored to full health.

It turns out that, after trying hard for many years, insight dawns: there’s a different way of seeing how we walk with God, another way of seeing the way of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit wants to enter our doubting hearts. To soothe our struggling souls. To reach each of us as we are. Regardless of doubt, illness, injury, sins, or anything else that could block the way. To enter our very being and fill us with the joy of being alive. Right here, right now. 

God wants to fill us with overflowing love. So much excess of love that we can’t help sharing it with the next person we see – even as I limp to approach that person. The next hurting, struggling, doubting child of God.

It seems that God leaves the messiness of life on earth for us to learn how to manage.

Set aside what I want God what to do for me.

Let the Holy Spirit fill me with the joy of being alive today. And share that wonder with another.

In Jesus’ name we look to you, O Lord.

School children were shot. Two died in the Catholic church. Parents who shopped for new school supplies must now decide on small caskets. Other families sit in anxious hospital chairs, not knowing if, or when, their own will be able to go to school again. Surviving children will spend years in fear of entering a school or church again.

We are told that a shooter tends to be a lost soul. One who lived a life of being ignored or bullied or left out. A person who missed the message that life is worth living.

Dark oaks stand against a cloudy sky. Tonight the stars in the heavens are hidden from our sight.

Two Catholic children died, children now held in God’s loving arms. For words to hold in our hearts on this day, we can listen to a Catholic monk. 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

St. Francis of Assisi, 1181-1226