In Need Of Healing

O Healing River, send down your water. . .
Tomorrow the congregation I serve will gather for a service of prayer. Some have asked, "Pastor, do you think we particularly need it?" The more I think about it, the more I hesitate to answer too quickly. No, nothing big prompted the design of the service. If anyone deserves credit it is the Holy Spirit, as a colleague reminded me yesterday. And yet, as each person learned of the service the response was, "We certainly need it."

We always need prayer for healing and hope. And for what higher purpose can a congregation gather than to pray for each other, for ourselves, and for our world? So tomorrow we will listen to scriptures about healing and read from Psalm 30 affirming God's healing presence and we will ponder how to act when healing does not come, at least not the healing we've requested. And we will sing. .

O Healing River send down your waters,
Send down your waters upon this land.
O Healing River send down your waters
And wash the blood from off the sand.

And we will light candles for each other and for this land full of hurting people and places.

This land is parching, this land is burning
no seed is growing in the barren ground.
O Healing River send down your waters
O Healing River send your water down.

And we will praise, yes praise God, the one who "turns mourning into dancing." (Ps. 30:11)

Our whole worship will be an act of trust and belief.
It always is.