“Bathed in Healing Power” - By Bishop G

Dear Friends,

            Recently I visited with a woman, named Sue, who is 97 years young.  I wanted to thank her for her gift to Sawyerville kids.  She told me that she had recently fallen three times at home, and though she wasn’t injured in her falls, falling signaled the end of her driving herself and getting out without help.  For the first time in her life, she hired a caregiver, a woman of color, who had never visited a white neighborhood before. 

            The caregiver had two small children and really needed the work.  Lately, she’s been helping Sue walk with a walker outside in the fresh air.   She’s become a friend to this elderly woman, and now Sue is sharing books with her caregiver, giving her Jane Austen novels and To Kill a Mockingbird.  They are educating each other.

            All that is lovely, but the most interesting thing is that when the caregiver takes Sue to church for a Thursday noon Eucharist, now she’s going inside and worshiping with Sue.  She’s even taking her little girls with her.  All of a sudden, the kingdom has come near.  Not because Sue went door to door or was trying to convert this person, but just because Sue was reaching out to be kind and loving, and she did not hide her faith.  Only God knows what all this may mean to both of them as time passes, but I imagine it will mean Good News for both.  I like to think that many demons are being cast out. 

            A famous physician and psychotherapist, Gerald May, says that people who care for each other in church can be a force for healing.   Dr. May writes: “God’s grace through community involves something far greater than other people’s support and perspective.  The power of grace is nowhere as brilliant nor as mystical as in communities of faith.  Its power includes not just love that comes from people and through people, but love that pours forth among people, as if through the very spaces between one person and the next.  Just to be in such an atmosphere is to be bathed in healing power.”

            We are approaching our annual Person2Person weekend, where Bre Carter, Missioner for Racial Healing and Pilgrimage, will lead a group of young people from all over the state as they explore the history of Civil Rights in the Birmingham area.  During this important weekend, the youth will share, learn, and attempt to understand race relations in Alabama and their place in it all.  They’ll tour Civil Rights sites, talk with priests and pioneers of the movement, discuss social justice, and discern how to encourage healing.   We pray that, by listening to each other’s stories, reading scripture, and sharing meals and time together, God’s grace will come in unexpected ways with healing and hope.  God’s grace comes when we least expect it and brings Good News.  The Good News will sneak up on us, capture us, and we may realize that God is doing for us what we can’t do for ourselves.   Dr. King once said, “I have decided to stick with love…hate is too great a burden to bear.” 

             In the spirit of Dr. King’s legacy of non-violent love, please join me in praying for the Person2Person weekend ahead and for violence to cease and peace to break out everywhere.  Thank you for your pool noodles, swimsuits, meals, endless art supplies, and beach towels.  Thank you for your love and prayers.  God willing, we will all find some healing. 

I hope I see you at church.