You gotta have faith....

This week at Crossings we read the stories of how Jesus healed several different people. What we noticed and discussed was that in each occasion, Jesus called the people to faith. He asked them to trust him, to believe him. They did and were healed.

What does that look like for us today? What does trusting a God we can't see, and often can not hear look like? What does healing look like?

We didn't have answers but we thought about the words Jesus shared with his disciples before he died. Two things he emphasized. First, that the holy spirit would come and second, that they were to love each other. From this we took that healing happens in relationship - with God and with each other. And that Faith and trust are about opening ourselves to that relationship.

When life seems empty...

This week at bible study we read John 15. Jesus's last teaching to the disciples during the last supper. He says, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."

A woman in our group has beautiful rose bushes in her backyard. And she called her dad about how to take care of them. His answer was to hack them until there's nothing left but a dead looking stump.

Reluctantly she hacked away till the beautiful, life-abundant bushes were nothing more than dead stumps. Afraid she had killed them, she looked out at them all winter, wondering if they would ever grow back.

In the spring, they grew. Bigger and more beautiful than the previous year.

Sometimes when life seems to strip down to nothing. When we lose our jobs, our health, our friends, our family, our favorite activities, when we have nothing left of us but dead dry stumps which seem lifeless. God is at work.

In those times all we have is God, and if we remain in him and let his love and spirit work in us, spring will come and we will arise and bear much fruit. Our lives richer and more beautiful because every unimportant and useless part had been chopped away.

So if God is pruning you. Live in it. Sing the blues. Read scripture. Pray. God will grow you again.

and the blind shall see...

This week at biblestudy, we discussed John Chapter 9. Jesus heals the blind man. In sum, Jesus's disciples see a blind man and ask Jesus if he is blind because of sin. Jesus says no, spits on the ground and rubs mud in the guy's eyes and tells him to wash in the pool. The man goes, washes and is healed.

People are amazed and they take him to the pharisee's who question him about who healed him. It just so happened to be the Sabbath, a time when Jews weren't supposed to work. So the leaders got in a fight about whether the healing was from God or not. They ask the blind man what he thinks. The blind man says that he thinks it must be from God. They kick him out of the synagog.

Later Jesus finds the man and the man believes in him. Then Jesus says "I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind."

People were so worked up about how well they thought they understood God that they couldn't see God's work among them. The lesson struck me that when we think we know who God is and how God works we become blind to what God is doing because we stop looking for him. Jesus made things simple - miracles done out of compassion were a sign of God's work on earth - simple people could see this. But people who had a preconcieved notion of who Jesus was supposed to be missed it completely. What preconcieved ideas do we have about God? can we see God at work now?