Tag: helping

30 Days in Gennesaret: Day 8 Helper, Helper

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Helper, Helper

My soul yearns

to see this thing done—

healing painted over

my friend’s story

in glorious color

She likes pink.

 

In despair I bow my head

touching the stone named

How can this be…

and hear Jesus whisper,

“It is not she who needs the miracle,

my child.”

 

Deep inside that web of heart and soul

where sustaining hope

and willed goodness try to seed

and flourish,

my seeds – often

are earthbound.

 

We need Jesus

who ever cultivates

the hope of eternity.

Eternity—

that country where ‘help’

is defined.

jfig     3/2020

 

Mark 6:53-56 When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. They ran throughout the whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever the heard he was. And wherever he went – into villages, towns or countryside – they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed. 

“Mark 6:53 (NIV) – When they had crossed over.” Blue Letter Bible. Web. 8 Apr, 2020. <https://www.blueletterbible.org/niv/mar/6/53/p1/s_963053&gt;.

At times, the weight of another’s pain, feels more than I can bear. This poem alludes to the positive motives in that desire – goodness, hope – but I have sometimes felt the need to see others well for reasons of fear, exhaustion, boredom, the need for reassurance that Jesus truly can heal, that there is hope. Mercifully, God never loses sight of where we are going on this journey called faith.

Ephesians 1:11-14; John 4:13,14; I Peter 1:3-5

 

30 Days in Gennesaret: Brokenness Day 3

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Mark 6:53-56 When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. They ran throughout the whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever the heard he was. And wherever he went – into villages, towns or countryside – they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed. 

“Mark 6:53 (NIV) – When they had crossed over.” Blue Letter Bible. Web. 3 Apr, 2020. <https://www.blueletterbible.org/niv/mar/6/53/p1/s_963053&gt;.

 

Three years ago, I started working in a place where nearly everyone was visibly broken. There was a time, when I was afraid to get too close, for fear society’s ills would, leprosy-like, creep up my flesh. I did not yet know, how well I reside among the broken. That Jesus could walk by to find me groveling in the dirt, his tangled fringe grasped in both begging hands, and still, with eyes of compassion, see himself reflected there. Being among the ‘sick’ made me brave enough to examine my own festering wounds.  And offer them up, for His cure. Today’s poems reflect moments in this ongoing journey.

 

Need

‘They’ lie in the street -hovel deep

need so mottled and stark

one cannot even

conceive a dream.

 

Our only recourse – CRY OUT

at the pain we feel…or perceive.

Entitlement stoops clumsily

…to lend a hand up?

 

Jesus, we wait for you

Perhaps in the waiting

our knees should hit the dust

too.

jfig     3/2020

 

Brokenness

She does not need me to ‘announce’

what is wrong with her.

Funny…she already knows.

 

Nor to endorse a cure.

Leaking ‘helper’ need

does not increase her chances of survival.

 

By all means – draw near.

In helping to lift her wasted hand

both hers and mine will brush His hem.

 

jfig     3/2019-20

Where do you find yourself in the Jesus story – among the broken, or tending wounds, perhaps?    What do you see?