Growing in Resilience
Day 14, Read Isaiah 53
Reflection: Hold and Heal, based on Isaiah 53:4-5, The Voice Translation

It was our suffering he carried, our pain and distress, our sick-to-the-soul-ness. We just figured that God had rejected him, that God was the reason he hurt so badly. But he was hurt because of us; he suffered so. Our wrongdoing wounded and crushed him. He endured the breaking that made us whole. The injuries he suffered became our healing.

An extended quote from Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer by Richard Rohr 
The significance of Jesus’ wounded body is his deliberate and conscious holding of the pain of the world and refusing to send it elsewhere. The wounds were not necessary to convince God that we were lovable; the wounds are to convince us of the path and the price of transformation. They are what will happen to you if you face and hold sin in compassion instead of projecting it in hatred.

Jesus’ wounded body is an icon for what we are all doing to one another and to the world. Jesus’ resurrected body is an icon of God’s response to our crucifixions. The two images contain the whole message of the Gospel.

Prayer
Hallelujah to Jesus!
Who gives dignity in response to scorn

Hallelujah to Jesus!
Who offers relationship to the face of rejection

Hallelujah to Jesus!
Who understands our pain
The pain we get
The pain we reap
The pain we sling

silence

Hallelujah to Jesus!
Who accepts wounding and crushing
so we would have forgiveness
so we could offer forgiveness

Hallelujah to Jesus!
Who accepts beating and mocking
so we would have peace
so we could be peace

Hallelujah to Jesus!
Who accepts whipping and torture and death
to hold us and heal us
so we may hold and heal

Silence

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Click Here for more on the Growing in Resilience Reading Plan sponsored by Bishop Ken Carter and the Cabinet of the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. 

Hold and Heal © 2018 Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia
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