Healing

Much of our suffering is individual. Maybe somebody I know died, but your dream fell apart. Maybe I am terminally ill, but you are out of work. Maybe my marriage ended, but you received a bad diagnosis. We all suffer. We all hurt. But we often don't hurt together. After all, my pain isn't yours. And vice versa. For all our attempts to relate and understand one another's pain, there is a sense to which our hurt can only be fully felt within ourselves. And so often only we truly know the ache we carry, even as we may have experienced the same loss or suffering as somebody else. Thus, we walk around as mysteries to each other...feeling like we know our hearts only in part and thinking we are powerless to offer one another what they need in a hard season of life. 

I have not been a stranger to this feeling in recent months. For the longest time, I've felt a darkness I couldn't explain. Have carried sorrow not many understood. Have sometimes felt so isolated by it all that I was inconsolable - no matter how compassionate others might have been. Have felt even God's distance, though I know deep down that He hasn't gone anywhere. Grief and pain do that to a soul. And there is no denying it. Somehow I think many more have walked through similar valleys as me, and I'm still searching for how to bridge this divide between loneliness and togetherness and how to find hope in community when not many will make your story a part of their own. 

But this... this time it's different. The whole world aches, and nobody is escaping. Death rates rise and hospitals burst and it all seems to be falling right apart and all our hearts hurt - for our world, for each other, for ourselves. For one of the first times in modern history, all of humanity is undergoing the same suffering. The same worry. The same unknowns. Friends text friends to voice their anxiety. Or  call to hear a reassuring voice and not feel so alone. All over the world, hearts race as concern for health of loved ones mounts, as people wonder how long this all will last, as finances drain and hope is strained and we all cry to God for some relief. For some sign this will be redeemed. 

In this unprecedented time, all our suffering is united. We are all feeling the same things, just maybe at different times or in different ways. And as creation groans for the day when all things will be made new, we struggle to believe in a God who is in control while it all feels anything but. Can there be life on the other side of this darkness? Grace still in places where it appears to have left? 

The headlines stream, the news keeps on breaking and, with every projection, every guess, we feel our souls breaking right along with it. We keep holding out for those bits of good news to reassure us that it's all going to be okay. Hospital beds keep on being filled with no end in sight, and we're all in this waiting - this pause - together. 

Yet somehow, it's a comforting reality...this thought that everyone is enduring at the same time. While we may still suffer inner struggles that are unique to every one of us, this global crisis is bringing humanity together so that we can all say more so than ever, that we know how each other is feeling. Because we're all trying to persevere and hope on. To hold onto each other and to have faith when all the information wars against our faith and raises doubts that we will come through. 

We all can agree that the world is in need of healing right now. But perhaps it's not just the physically sick who are in need. Maybe in this time of confinement and solitude, we're discovering that our own hearts are sick, too. That we need a healing of our own and not just the ones who are adding to the virus statistics daily. We're all struggling to breathe in some way. We're all aching for a cure only God can give us. After all, Jesus said that He didn't come for those who were well but those who were sick and isn't the Great Physician coming for all of us right now? 

Maybe this is His hidden grace that we're all shut in for awhile. Maybe He knows this is the only way to get the attention of our world and bring it the true healing it so deeply craves. Perhaps He knows the only way some will become fully well is if others get sick. I don't pretend to understand His mind or trace the reasons why He has allowed this pandemic. But I am making room for the fact that this hasn't happened without His notice or His consent. Some will hate Him the more for letting this take place. But perhaps some will come to believe. In their moments of loss, exhaustion, anxiousness, hopelessness, and uncertainty, maybe God's voice will finally be heard. 

Here we are asking for His healing for the world, for the sick, when we actually need to be praying for healing for ourselves. 

As neighbors, friends, and loved ones all go through this one day at a time, there is a setting aside differences - a breaking down of barriers - a discovering of commonalties that brings joy to the heart. In this season, maybe we're all becoming a bit more like Jesus and finding ways to turn into love when, in times past, we were too busy or too self-absorbed to notice or act. As governments strain to cope with this crisis, as doctors and nurses empty themselves to care for the ailing, as it seems things can only get worse before they'll get better... maybe God is starting a quiet healing within our hearts and our communities, calling us to forgive, to reach across barriers, to be the hope our world is so desperately seeking. 

For once, we are all suffering together. Not as individuals but society as a whole. The world as we know it is temporarily altered. And we are changing too. At the end of all this, may it be said that we withstood and we grew. That we stood together and came closer. And in this waiting, in this pause, may we take this opportunity to be part of God's miracle, God's healing answer for our time.