“A Healing Touch”

(~) “A Healing Touch”

by the late William Gaston.

Here is a selection entitled “A Healing Touch” from the Ordinary Time section of “Christian with a Twist.”

Mark 5:24b-34

Sometimes it is not the disease itself that is so hard to deal with but rather all you have to go through while dealing with it. HMOs, referrals, formularies, preferred providers, income limits, billing, side effects known and expected and not common but always possible. Then there are hours spent in waiting rooms, tests you must fast for but that they are never quick about, appointments that are hard to make and harder to keep.

I thank God that I have not had all of the above problems and only had them occasionally. Some have constantly had them all and more. It has probablyhelped me that cancer is a disease that elicits support, sympathy, and funding. It has not always been that way. It is still often not that way with AIDS, and I will bet it was not in Jesus’ time for women with “an issue of blood” as the King James Bible puts it. Come to think of it, sometimes in our own time women with diseases or other hardships are said to have “issues.” We have not come such a long way, have we, baby?

But in all times, faith helps. It may not cure you. We are not told that Jesus cured everyone. All diseases are not curable, some probably never will be, and new diseases seem to appear as quickly as cures are found.

Meanwhile faith makes way for healing, and healing gives you the strength to fight for a cure until you either find one or no longer need it. Healing gives you the courage to reach out for help, to ask a friend to drive you to an appointment, to feed you when you do not have the strength, or maybe just to hold you.

Healing reminds you that you will still be loved when you mess the bed or the car seat with blood, vomit, or something else. It is amazing what a little water or a little touch can do. Jesus offered both, so can we.

The other day a doctor asked me why I keep participating in clinical trials. I told him I thrive on the attention. They do set one apart from the crowd. As impersonal as pharmaceutical companies can be, somewhere between the factory and the chemo chair humanity steps in. Sometimes Jesus wears a lab coat or scrubs or white slacks and a flowered smock. Sometimes you have just got to reach out and touch.

Used with permisson Please visit the Chi Rho Press Web site. http://www.ChiRhoPress.com

Related Articles:

• Guy And A Bucket Of Shrimp
• Overcoming Depression
• The Different Elements of Forgiveness
• Government, Religion and Contraception
• Movie Review – The Descendants

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.