Leaning into Luke

 

³⁸ After leaving the synagogue he entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked him about her. ³⁹ Then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them.

Two healing stories back-to-back.  We met Simon last Sunday.  In that passage we learned more about his backstory: that he was a fisherman and that Jesus saw something in Simon that Simon couldn’t see in himself.  But before Simon was called to follow Jesus, he apparently invited Jesus over for brunch.  Simon, who we hear is married, has a family member who is sick.  While we can skate right past this detailed, but it is as true as each of our lives. 

In your story, you have had moments and memories of family being sick.

In the last year, we know that over 400,000 Americans and 2 million brothers and sisters world-wide have had a family member die from the coronavirus.  That doesn’t count deaths due to cancer or car accidents or violence.  Grief is woven into us. Recently, I read this poem/prayer by Jan Richardson from 2017 entitled, “ Irresistible Blessing”

This blessing has been walking for a long time, traveling with no map, no signpost, no guide. It has been aching with a heart unbelievably broken and unimaginably lost and immeasurably tired. This blessing does not have it all together. This blessing sometimes wakes up anxious and afraid. This blessing had to be quiet, had to let itself sit in stillness and sorrow, had to let itself stop and rest to allow for joy to become imaginable again and grace to become believable again and the presence of love to become inescapable again. This blessing knows you carry your own sorrow, your own grief. It knows the weariness that visits you, the questions that attend your road. It knows, too, how you keep turning yourself toward mystery, how you keep turning yourself toward hope, how you keep turning yourself toward this world with the beautiful stubbornness by which a way is made. And so this blessing is glad to finally cross your path. This blessing has been waiting for you. This blessing has been watching for you. This blessing has been wanting to see your face, to speak your name, to offer thanks. This blessing meets you with glad welcome. This blessing meets you with persistent hope. This blessing meets you with fierce love that is ancient and present. This blessing comes to you with heart impossibly open and irresistibly drawn and infinitely grateful for the blessing that you bear, for the blessing that you are.

I invite you to pause and re-read these words several times today.  Carry these words within you.  Let them sing to your soul.  

Prayer: God let your word of blessing find me in my need for healing and surround me every hour this day.  Amen.