Hello friends,
In September, our worship series is called Healing in a Time of COVID. Healing?
Right now friends and loved ones are facing serious illnesses. Some have received a diagnosis that breaks our hearts, ALS, cancer, Alzheimer’s. And were it in our power, we would do whatever it takes to rescue them from their suffering.
One young family is waiting as their baby recovers from a difficult birth.
Several people have asked for prayers for troubled marriages.
My husband Dave is waiting for the results from a COVID test. Two days ago, late in the evening, he spiked a temperature. No other symptoms, just a fever. To our knowledge, he has not been exposed to anyone with COVID. We are pretty careful. He was tested yesterday and now we are waiting for the results. (I will let you know the results.)
With all this, does it makes any sense at all to talk about healing? I admit I have more questions than answers.
Is healing the same as a cure? Is there any value in suffering? Why do people suffer?
Treatment, recovery, medication, chemo, therapy, vaccines. What role do they play in healing?
Can someone be perfectly healthy when it comes to their physical health and be very sick in their soul?
And can the opposite be true? Can we be physically sick, but healthy in all other ways?
Talk about faith healings may conjure up images of old-time pastors standing before vulnerable sick people calling for demons to flee and sicknesses to be instantly cured. I am a pastor but I have no faith in myself that I could do this. Am I supposed to be able to carry out faith healings? Is it simply that I have too little faith to do that?
I read the scriptures. I believe that Jesus did restore sight to the blind. This Sunday I will preach about the incident when the paralyzed man was set before, Jesus and Jesus released him from his paralysis. I do not doubt that the man was healed from paralysis. If Jesus was so good at healing, why didn’t he open a medical office? He would have been wildly popular.
And something else curious, he healed lots of people. People were being restored. Community health improved, and yet the powers of the day were opposed to what he was doing, so opposed they put him to death. Why didn’t they appreciate what he was doing? Is there something in the world that does not want us to be well?
Are you well? In what ways are you healthy? In what ways are you unhealthy?
My understanding of God comes from scripture and conversations with others and prayers. And honestly, sometimes it seems to come from the thin air, from a sense in my soul as I move through the world around me. And right now, in the midst of all that is happening in our world and the lives of loved ones, I feel more than I ever have in my life, that God wants to heal us. Maybe God grieves for us. Maybe God grieves that we have never really fully received the full healthy lives God intended for us.
Bodily wholeness, emotional well-being, mental functioning, spiritual aliveness. That is the definition of health we have been using. I am convinced that God wants this sort of healing for all of us and our neighbors. My heart aches for this. How do we get there? I don’t know the way, but I am certain God does.
I suppose pastors are supposed to have all the answers. I don’t. I could berate us all about how sinful we are and describe how we all fall short. That’s not really how I do things, and besides, would I be telling us anything we didn’t already know? (Note: I am included in the sinful and the fallen short.)
So today, maybe we place all these questions before God. Maybe they can all come together in a bigger question: God, what would you like us to be, think, do, to fulfill your hope for a healthy world?
Asking questions and listening for God.
Pastor Cindy
Pastor Cindy Hickman
West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Avenue
West Des Moines Iowa 50265
515-279-0826
Like us on Facebook or visit us at wdmumc.org. Join us for worship at 9:30 on Sunday morning on line and follow our posts all week long.
This week at WDMUMC
Children’s Sunday School begins this Sunday! Zoom with your Sunday school friends on Sunday morning and learn about God with Pastor Trevor and Super Teacher Alice! Contact Pastor Trevor to learn how you can join in.
What Is the Bible? How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories can Change the Way you Think and Feel About Everything That’s the title of a book by Rob Bell and Pastor Trevor and the Cross Training Class are inviting you to read it with him. The reading group begins this Sunday. Contact Pastor Trevor if you are interested.
Third Grade Bibles! The church would like every third grader to have a bible. Bibles will be dropped off at every third grader’s home and on Sunday, September 20 during morning parking lot worship we will have a special moment to bless them. If you have a third-grader or someone older who has not received a Bible, please let Pastor Trevor or Alice Burress know. If you have a grandchild or neighbor child who would like one, we would love to share it with them as well. Many thanks to Alice Burress for her work in children’s ministry. And special appreciation to Ken Clark and the memorial to his wife Nancy that makes these bibles available.
Mondays at 8 am join Pastor Cindy on Facebook for Monday morning prayer.
And Monday at 10:30 we will ring the bell in memory of those in Iowa who have died from COVID in the last week.
Thank you for being the church!
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