By Rev. Eugenia A. Gamble
A number of years ago when I was pastoring in Colorado, a colleague told a story about a friend of hers who was traveling back to Denver from a conference in Fort Collins. She and her conference mate were driving south on I-25 just at that magic time of day when the sun begins to set behind the Rockies leaving each peak seemingly rimmed with a golden fire. They had had a wonderful time and were talking in an animated way about how to put what they had learned to work in their lives and professions, when they rounded a curve in the road just as a terrible motorcycle accident occurred. It looked, they said, like the rider was tossed as if on sheet flapped in readiness for folding. This was in the days before cell phones, so they pulled off the road near where the helmetless rider lay unconscious. The male driver ran to try to direct traffic and urge someone to call for help while the woman passenger ran to the fallen rider. She crouched down next to him, whispered to him and stroked his hair until the ambulance arrived and whisked him away. When the two got back in their car and returned to their drive, they were silent for a long time, shaken. Finally, the man said to his friend, “I saw you talking to that young man. He was obviously unconscious and may have been dead. And yet you kept talking. What could you possibly have been saying to him all this time?” She responded while trying to wipe the blood from her hands and skirt, “I just kept saying the same thing over and over again. I just repeated, ‘The worst is over. The healing has already begun.’”
That remarkable story has stayed with me for more than 30 years now. Not just as a story of those three people whom I did not know, but rather as a parable that carries the central truth of our lives as Christians. The worst is always behind us. The healing is always happening within, among and around us. Even when there are no signs of life. Even when we are helpless to change our situations. Even when the metaphorical blood of our violent times stains our skirts and clings to our hands. From the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus and forever into eternity, God has defeated the worst and works without rest to bring about the healing that is a result and is, indeed, the deepest will of God for each of us.
The problem for us is that sometimes we want to define healing’s parameters and timing. To be ‘healed,’ we decide, the earth must shake, the scales must fall from our eyes in expected ways and only in the ways we desire. That is not how God’s healing often works. Sometimes it comes with a snap crackle and pop just like Hollywood would have us believe. Sometimes it comes from a long rocky road of trying everything imaginable. Sometimes it comes in the subtle transformations that suffering kneads into the soul and bakes into wisdom and compassion. In any way it comes, it always comes and, actually, is constantly coming. In these strange and strident days of violence and blame in which we seem entranced as Americans (and indeed in many other places and cultures) we often begin to worship the fight, or the enemy, giving all our energy to defeating whatever it, and who, we perceive as damaging us. So for the next month I am offering scriptures and devotions that invite you to consider all the ways that God works healing in us as individuals and, through us, as people’s. Each day I invite you to sit with the scripture for a moment after you read it, before you read my thoughts. Let the words bring up any resonance that they carry within you into conscious awareness. Then read my thoughts and see if new ideas surface. Roll those thoughts around in yourself gently for a moment, and then pray the day’s prayer. If you are feeling a time of conflict either within your thoughts, your body, your family, friends or culture, just listen to it as best you can in a non-violent and non-judgmental way. Ask yourself, what healing might take place if each of us left every conversation feeling seen, heard, understood and valued? Ask God to help you make that your healing practice.