But Peter said, “I have no silver of gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” Acts 3:6
Those of us who spent any time at 54 Ardmore Street in Hamden CT know first hand of the inexplicable healing power of Ethel’s chicken noodle soup. The mere smell of it meant someone who could feel a whole lot better was about to. Likewise her pumpkin pie and corned beef hash. Was the miracle in the recipe box stored above the stove? Or in the hands that reached up to fetch it?
Hands are central to who we are. Look at our culture. Can I give you a hand? I know it like the back of my hand. Don can be quite the handful.
And as a worshipping community, we pass the peace and join them in prayer in celebration that the Kingdom of God is at …..
The Ethel’s among us are generous, gentle loving healers. Their hands often prepare comfort food, or crochet comforters. Sometimes they build comfortable dwellings and sometimes they comfort and ease the pain of chronic ear infections or knotted shoulders. The mere memory of her hands can still energize. On her deathbed, muted by life support machinery, she assured a grieving grandson the his fears of being too weakened by her passing were just that and nothing more.
Trying to better understand healing energy has been an interesting pursuit. Studying Witchcraft as a Science with Salem’s Laurie Cabot was a first step. Energy, visualized in the color spectrum, flowing in the left and out the right could seemingly be focused. Done in correctness and for the good of many, realities could be altered. It could also bring a Methodist Bishop to your church to investigate charges of heresy. He graciously affirmed my unorthodox intercessionary prayer style as odd and likely harmless, possibly delusional.
These Ethel wannabe hands redefined by a Wiccan practitioner owe a great deal to another wise spiritual mentor. Pastor and author Flora Slosson Wuelner asserts that true discipleship comes in rejecting the objectifying and potentially self destructive self image of becoming catalytic channels, conduits or pipelines of heavenly power. Alternatively, abiding in the reservoir of God’s love can be miraculous. Optical nerve tumors, cerebral arteriovenous malformations, carotid aneurysms- even apartheid can and ought to be brought to the Lord in prayer.
Those healing moments though mysterious are no mystery. As taught in Rev. Kenneth Haugh’s Stephen Ministry training, we can only choose to care and do what we can with what we have. Or don’t have. The God of medicine, the God of miracles, the God of mystery provides the cure.
–Don Akin
O God, we offer our prayers in the name of Jesus. In his name, by the power of your Spirit, may we heal and be healed. Amen.