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Touch. It is something so simple and so necessary. This past week I had someone call the church office and suggest that the session visit our sick and ailing to perform the laying on of hands for each of them.
We believe in a God who has the power to call all that is out of nothing. Jesus spoke against the fig tree and it withered. Jesus commanded the lame man to get up and walk and he got up and walked. Jesus told the demons to leave the demon-possessed and enter the pigs and they did. The Canaanite woman begged for Jesus to heal her daughter and he replied, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.”
However, Jesus chose the primary method of healing to be touch. There is something about touch that transmits tremendous curative powers, powers of physical and emotional healing, powers that remind us that we are part of a family, that we have a bond with one another that is stronger than mere words.
Touching eases pain, lessens anxiety, softens the blows of life, generates hope and has the power to heal, according to most experts. In fact, modern psychology and medicine are confirming what mothers across the centuries have intuitively known--namely, the healing power of touch.[1]
Now, I don’t mean to minimize the divine touch of Jesus Christ in any way. If anything, I mean to personalize it, saying, Jesus could have spoken the word and healed anyone he wished, but much of the time he chose to incorporate touch because that was a part of the way the Triune God had created us. Jesus knew the power of touch.
Touching reminds us of relationship. It confirms that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. It claims the other person as one of the family and conveys that message to them. “You are one of us. We love you.”
With all of this in mind, we are in the process of forming a team of elders to go to our sick, our shut-ins, our spiritually weary, to anyone who will have us and. . . .touch them, reminding them that they are indeed a part of the body of Christ. We claim them. We love them. And, just maybe, through our touch, God will heal them
Pastor Craig
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