Beloved,

With the health-care debate in Congress slow as molasses and without any of its sweetness, it’s time to talk about a Christian spirituality of health care and wellness. I’ve been thinking and reading about it all week:  about faith healing, about the mind-body connection, about the role of prayer in making people physically well, about whether or not we believe God intervenes (interferes?) in human suffering, about just what Jesus did do, and just what Jesus might do, to help heal people with chronic conditions. And I’ll be honest. The more I think and pray about it, the less clear I am.

But we need to talk about it in church. Our physical bodies, and the state they’re in, govern so much of our life on this plane of reality. How the people we love are doing–from our little girl’s stomach bug to our mom’s massive chemo marathon–so dominates our consciousness, that so often, it’s hard to think about anything else *but* healing. It’s the biggest, bottomest rung on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, for a reason.

In the story we’ll peer into this Sabbath, Jesus heals a woman who had been crippled with back pain for 18 years (Luke 13:10-17). No biggie for him. But then why did she have to wait 18 years! Was it because no HMO would accept her, with her preexisting condition? Was it her own stubborn clinging to her condition? Was God playing dice, biding time until the right moment to use her as An Example? Was it something else yet, a mystery, beyond our ken?

This Sunday, with Kelly as our able liturgist, with choir singing, with Lent at our backs, we’ll think and pray about movement, a simple shift, from bent-over to standing-up-straight, from illness to wellness. We might be surprised at the answers God writes on our hearts.

bless you, brothers and sisters,
Molly