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Writer's pictureJohn Bryant

Mark 6: 53-56: What Else Can Anguish Be?

53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. 54 And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him 55 and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well



What do we do with our sick and our maimed and our broken? They are peripheral, and we put them in places they can’t be seen. And we, ourselves, when we are sick, and broken, and maimed, hide ourselves where we can’t be seen.


But the Divine Love of Christ reverses the flow: the sick, the maimed, the broken, and the peripheral are flooded to the center, out of the place of hiding, out of the dark little rooms, they meet Christ in the open.


And with Christ, Our Anguish is not wretchedness. It is a prayer. It is a psalm. A way that we trust Christ.


And our Suffering is not final. It is a psalm. A movement towards Christ.


Our vulnerability is not a humiliation and rejection. It is a psalm. A movement towards Christ.


What the people who received Mercy knew was that they were helpless.


Perhaps to have received Mercy is to have received our own helplessness. Our own vulnerability. And to have received it back as holy.




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