Thank God for the people in our lives who desire that we be well. We all know them. A family member, a friend, or even a stranger, who are concerned that we are suffering and will be a listening presence, extend comfort or encouragement, advocate for justice. They see us, they hear us, they open beyond their needs to meet us in our need.
In this Sunday’s gospel, we meet Jesus in a couple healing stories.* In both, someone comes forward to ask Jesus to help on behalf of another. In the first story, a mother – of a different faith tradition – for her little daughter who has an unclean spirit; in the second, some people – we don’t know whether friends or strangers – for a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. Both the mother and the people trust God at work in the care they are hearing and seeing from Jesus.
Jesus engages the woman in a dialogue, a bit edgy, but one that opens us to see the scope of God’s care that is beyond our immediate kin and communities. The intimacy of the deaf man’s healing – Jesus put his fingers into his ears, spits, and touches his tongue – banishes any notion that God is distant or ashamed of human form.
God is in the outstretched hand, the voice speaking up, the steps each of us take to care. Jesus desires to help those in need. All are the neighbors we are to love as ourselves.
As we enter the last two months toward Election Day in November, my lens on the candidates’ words and deeds and their policies is how much they care like Jesus. What do I hear that inspires my spirit to compassion, generosity, and service, wanting all of God’s people and creation to be cared for well.
--Trish Stefanik, Overlook Retreat House at Dayspring
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“In any relationship, fierce love causes us to cross boundaries and borders to discover one another, to support one another, to heal one another. When we do this, when we go crazy with affection, and offer wild kindness to our neighbor across the street or across the globe, we make a new kind of space between us. We make space for discovery and curiosity, for learning and growing.”
–Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World (New York: Harmony Books, 2021) by Jacqui Lewis.
