You've Got That Healin' Touch

God is Creator (Father) and Redeemer (Son), but God is also Sustainer (Holy Spirit). God''s sustaining nature always seeks to heal, to restore each creature and the entire creation to its original state of wholeness. Take time this week to explore with your congregation the diverse ways God has brought healing into your life together - either through other people, relationships, or the created cosmos surrounding you.

It has been estimated that nearly twenty percent of the gospel narratives are devoted to healing. Indeed a case could be made for arguing that the entire Second Testament is one long healing event performed by God - healing the rift that has existed between humanity and heaven. The universe was intended to operate harmonically, with all creation intimately and intricately coordinated into a cohesive whole. But something went amiss. The biblical narrative is an attempt to explain that "something," and to record God's creative response to a now imperfect, unbalanced world.

For humans an out-of-balance existence is most commonly experienced as a state of illness. Both our physical and our spiritual natures deteriorate when they fail to resonate with God's harmonics. Health and wholeness remain the root chord of creation, but human freedom has enabled us to pound out our own distressingly clashing accompaniment to this universal symphony. Thus we experience disease, injury, anxiety,...