healer

“You’re a healer,” one of my friends says to another, as we sit encircling, an invisible linking of arms.

What an absolutely lovely, gracious gift, to heal, and as spiritual gifts are given by God for the blessing of others, I see that my sister lives as a healer for me.

I sit in our dear friend’s living room on her soft sofa, hugging a pillow to my chest.

Later, when I get to digging, I’ll discover that all the way back to its Indo-European root, that blooming word of ours, heal, like God’s concept of shalom-peace, refers to wholeness and safety.

My friend has a way with broken people.  She makes us well.  She’s safe.  Well not her, not exactly, but Christ living in her, living through her, and that’s a gift.

Call us, maybe, this group of friends, the fellowship of encouragers, at least for today.  Here, we practice freedom in a new way, or at least new in the way the old command is new in Christ, gathering for the purpose of building each other up, as an act of protective love, gathering to say things to one another that, for more than one challenging reason, would otherwise mostly remain unsaid, because in our unfiltered corruption, it has instead become our greater human instinct to vocalize criticism and complaint. We tend to cancel more people than we uphold.

“Yes, yes, YES! I was just about to say that,” another sister says, bouncing a little on the leg she’s folded up beneath her, her body all active assent.  “That’s exactly who you are.  You’re a healer.”

Now not just one, but two.

My sister, the healer right beside me, her hair spills around her face like a cascade of creative joy.  She, who knows, who has co-suffered, real body-breaking pain, not just of her own but in those she loves, glances at me and blinks, her mouth falling open in a voiceless how, or maybe, wow.  I can see both at once on her face.  Suffice it to say that in a recitation of her own spiritual gifts, she would not have mentioned healing.

Humans contain multitudes though, it’s true, like prisms, designed for bending and dispersing Light, and so, full spectrum seeing presumes multiple points of view, and even then, it’s not really us but different wavelengths of Light on display as they move through us.  At this point in my life I understand that I can’t even know myself without first knowing how God sees me, and then, how other people experience life when living it next to me.  I overflow, but my own eyes and heart can’t be trusted entirely for discerning what—or who–and how.

“I don’t know how to say it otherwise,” our sister-friend continues, and I can only grin and nod and softly say my own amen.  Without thinking, she flattens a hand over her own heart, explaining her own overflowing. “It’s healing just to be with you. It’s like your presence heals something in the people around you.”

I smile, rejoicing with this reflection, praying my sister’s humble heart can receive it, but also because for most of my life I read in scripture about gifts of healing and entertained an inner mystery, a hidden huh, believing I’d never actually seen that kind of miracle.

That’s the stuff of charlatans and charismatic tent meetings, of fictional plots and theater, right?

But Jesus went around doing good and healing (iaomai, in the Greek) all who were being oppressed by the devil, and He promised that those who have faith in Him will do even greater things than these. And the early disciples, who were only ordinary men receiving and changed by His power, also went about healing the sick.  All this, and God keeps telling me, keeps showing me, that His thoughts and ways are higher.  My understanding of things can be so small in comparison to the truth.

Beside me, our friend, our sister, so close to me I feel how we were mutually born—not of flesh, but of God, she looks at me again, her eyes holding mine, her face all a question. Wait, really?

Malachi the prophet vibrantly visualized a dawn for those regarding God with reverent awe, the sun of righteousness rising with healing in its rays, this a restoration, and iaomai healing, that word often used in scripture to describe healing from physical diseases, means healing from spiritual and emotional diseases too, the restoration of lives reconciled to union with God.  This I’ve seen not once but countless times, a soul made well and whole, sealed up with God and guarded with peace, and could it be that in the economy of God this represents something even greater?

“Yes, it’s true.  You are a healer.”  I say it easy, letting it spill, holding her gaze, knowing how it will cover over.  Only God heals a woman and then gives her the amazing grace to heal other souls in His name, and my friend needs to know, at last, needs to hear it spoken true and right out loud, that for all her breaking, this is the wholeness of Him in her.

Miraculous healing, I’m thinking, yes, I’ve seen that.  Yes, my friend, He’s done that through you.

Timothy Keller once wrote that, “Christ’s miracles were not a suspension of the natural order but the restoration” of it, and I see it right now in the life of my sister, how He’s still restoring everything to the way it was before, before the world fell to its most pervasive pandemic ever. I see how He’s still busy healing everything.  I see that I, reading Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, his mention of “healing, by that one Spirit,” had for so long only peered through a crack in the door what I could have been tearing apart the roof to receive, that yes of course, healing still comes by the power of God through the people of God, as a gift.

The healing, it falls fresh, like I’ve only just learned the word.