Dear Grace Community,
This month we started reading through the book of Mark in worship. The first two weeks there was a focus on healing stories.
In my sermon preparation, I focused on the history, and context, and connecting the stories to our month-long theme, “Why Church?” Then I stood up to preach and looked at you and thought of your stories and the people in your lives who long for healing. It occurred to me then how hard it might be to hear stories of Jesus’ healing miracles while those miracles are not realized in your lives.
I was grateful when one of you came to me and named this tension; how are we to understand these miracles in our lives today?
What I can tell you is that I believe the miracles in scripture. I believe that Jesus performed miracles. I believe miracles still happen. You’ve told me too many stories for me to believe otherwise. And I don’t know why they don’t happen more. I don’t know why God doesn’t heal more people. I know it’s not for lack of faith. I know that sometimes the healing comes through medicine, and sometimes it comes with death and wholeness in God.
When I sat down to write this, I kept hoping I’d come up with the perfect way to tie it up neatly, but I don’t have one. Only to say, know that you are not alone in asking these questions of scripture. This is one of the reasons why we read it together, so that we are not alone in our questions.
In Christ,
Catherine
JAN