Forgiveness and Healing through Prayer

How do we help to heal the people and the land that we live in today? We need healing not just because we have been living through a pandemic but also because we needed healing long before the pandemic began. We needed healing, in large part, because of the increasingly isolated society that we have adopted that is based on an independent and self-reliant culture that has been forged since our country gained its independence from England.

Since the advent of smart device technology, social media platforms, and, most recently, the global pandemic, what was once an ideal that the country gave its nod of approval to, has now taken on an acute form that is causing us to be unwell as a nation. Before those technological advances, digital social platforms, and high worldwide viral infection rates came into being, we were still too dependent upon one another, as a society, to act on that culturally self-reliant ideal to a high degree.

That is no longer the case. We are now able to do almost anything that we need or want to do online from banking to mental health therapy to several types of educational pursuits and doctor visits, to purchasing cars, and much more. The connections we have created and maintained with one another through social media have been a great benefit, as more of us can contact each other as often as we are available to do so. Even so, we all are feeling the ever-increasing ill effects socially of being either masked, socially spaced, or sheltered over the past year and a half.

We need healing for our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits. Where does that healing come from when we are so isolated from each other? How are we able to deal with the hardships, hurts, and pains that come our way, and the mistakes that we have made that caused other people pain, hurt, and hardship when the pathways to being healed most often are found within the group and not alone?

The Bible reading for this Sunday comes from James 5:13-20. You will feel James' emotions coming out to the readers of his day. He was instructing them to discover the ways that they could be healed - not on their own - but as a body of believers, and that healing was for a variety of ills that have plagued humanity from that time to this day.

Even though we have made it even harder to follow the instructions to be healed from James, through Christ's example, there is cause to be hopeful and to unite to help each other be healed. Remember, James is concerned about taking the words of our faith, love, and healing, and translating them into loving actions, healing treatments, and spiritual restoration as a natural byproduct of our relationship with God as the body of Christ, not as individuals doing it on our own. Amen.