Good morning…
I didn’t say a thing aloud, but my heart was crying out to God, shedding quiet tears, sharing the anguished lament of loved ones, hoping with all my heart, soul, and mind for the complete healing of a young woman about to undergo surgery for brain cancer. She and her young husband were separated in different places in the same strange city due to COVID restrictions, states away from their Atlanta home, preparing for her surgery at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. At the same time, a screen-full of loved ones gathered by ZOOM to combine our prayers, prayers for peace that passes understanding, prayers for the surgeon’s hands to be the very hands of God, prayers for strength, healing, and recovery to wholeness.
“God never wastes pain,” one man humbly said in his prayer. “Pain is transformed into worship, into healing, into prayer, into a deepening dependence upon God. We don’t understand much, LORD, but please magnify Yourself in all of us through this painful process.”
After our collective prayer time, I looked at my cluttered desk and saw this quote on a 3 x 5 card.
“Rilke describes a kind of love that neither avoids or invades the soul’s suffering,” writes Parker Palmer. “It is a love in which we represent God’s love to a suffering person, a God who does not ‘fix’ us but gives us strength by suffering with us. By standing respectfully and faithfully at the borders of another’s solitude, we may mediate the love of God to a person who needs something deeper than any human being can give” (Let Your Life Speak, 64).
On behalf of this vibrant young couple, we did not avoid and we did not invade. We simply joined together, representing God’s powerful, pervasive love, the endless love of our God who gives each of us strength by suffering with us. Respectfully and faithfully, may we as the community of believers continue to mediate the love of God to every suffering person who needs something deeper than any human being can give.
Join us in this work. Lend us a hand through prayer so that many will give thanks for the gift that comes to us when God answers the prayers of so many (2 Corinthians 1:11, VOICE).
…Sue…
