How has God restored order and healed the brokenness in your
life?
In Sunday's reading from Isaiah, God reassures those whose hearts are frightened
because of the chaos resulting from human transgression, illness, infirmity,
and environmental destruction. In its
place, God proposes a new order, an order in which the eyes of the blind are opened,
the ears of the deaf are cleared.
Even the landscape is restored: Streams will burst forth in the desert, and
rivers in the steppe. Psalm 146 adds
justice for the marginalized to this list: food
for the hungry and freedom from oppression
for those who are enslaved. Only God can restore order, transform our
existence, renew our lives -- and we are called to praise and
thanksgiving: Praise the Lord, my soul!
Jesus, God incarnate, is similarly concerned with restoring order,
touching the lives of the marginalized so as to bring them back to community,
setting things right within the context of the social fabric. In Mark's Gospel, his healing of the deaf man is intimate and
personal: Jesus puts his finger into the man's ears, spits and touches his tongue, groans, and says Ephphatha,
Be opened. Reaching into this man's
existence, Jesus is fully present to him, entering into his brokenness,
operating radical change, drawing him back into a just existence in community, showing no partiality, as James exhorts
in his letter, and as we, too, are called to do. God's order must be our order; God's justice must be our justice; God heals our
brokenness so that we might, in turn, bring that healing to others.
How might you help to restore order and heal brokenness
today?
This post was based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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