Today I'll be visiting the hospital (not for reasons to do with my health).
It has made me reflect on healing, and what it means to be healed, and what it means to pray for healing.
I wonder if sometimes we make healing too narrow - there is far more to it than simply recovering from an illness or accident.
And pain itself is more than just the pain of an injury, or infection, or disease... loneliness, anxiety, guilt, despair, grief, longing, fear...and more.
Healing comes in many forms, too. Sometimes it is indeed the 'getting better' from an illness, but equally it can be a finding of strength, a renewal of relationships, a sense of peace, and many other things.
It is all of this that we can pray for, when we pray for healing.
A prayer for others, today, which also sums this up quite nicely:
Lord God, whose Son, Jesus Christ,
understood people's fear and pain
before they spoke of them,
we pray for those in hospital;
surround the frightened with your tenderness;
give strength to those in pain;
hold the weak in your arms of love,
and give hope and patience
to those who are recovering;
we ask this through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
(Prayer from here)
♫ A suggestion today of music to let wash over you... De noche iremos - Taize
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