The great healing

I’d never keep my mouth shut

I have told the glad news of deliverance

In the great congregation. Psalm 40:9

Read Mark 7:31—37

I know that if I had been that man healed, not able to speak clearly because I had not been able to decipher sounds, and if I could now speak plainly, there would have to be one leading theme I’d have used my newly fluent tongue to repeat. Of course it would be: ‘He healed me! That man healed me! Whatever else he is, whatever arguments you construct about him, however you want to frame your debates over Jesus of Nazareth, I’m here to say in my own words, he gave me this voice you now hear!’ So it’s fair enough for me to turn the question to myself now: what is it about Jesus, that he has done for me, that you really can’t shut me up about? There’s got to be something. There’s got to be!

Lord, my Saviour, my healer, you who restored the deaf, the lame, the blind, the leper, the fever-ridden, and the dead: you have not left my life where it was. You have touched me. You have brought a healing and a wholeness, can I only see and recognise it. I am more fully myself because of you. And I do believe, unlike the man in the story, you have not commanded me to silence. Open my mouth to speak. To tell your story in my life.