Reflection:

Desperately ill people flocked to Jesus for healing. I can see how Jesus’ ministry is mirrored in the unglamourous, and difficult ministry of hospice care.

In Australia, hospice care was largely delivered by religious organisations until government involvement in the 1980’s. In 1907, Anglican Deaconess Ministries (ADM) established Homes of Peace, a ministry dedicated to caring for the very ill and dying. For the next 100 years, this was a cornerstone of ADM’s ministries.

In Mark 6 we see the tender intimacy of a living body imparting life and health to another. And yet while Jesus went about meeting a person’s physical needs, we know from the Gospels that what concerned him was granting eternal healing.

As opposed to sinful humanity, Jesus did not see people who are sick and dying as worthless and no further use to society. For he knew they were on the verge of eternity, a breath away from joy and glory and peace. They needed only ask, a whispered plea, a fleeting brush past his cloak, and he will grant them the healing that allows them to slip from this world into eternal life. It is Jesus’ ability to spiritually heal that must have spurred the deaconesses on as they ushered hundreds of souls from this life to the next.

There at the precipice of life and death, Jesus stands, arms outreached — “My poor, weary child. I have healed you. Come, today you will be with me in paradise.” We need only to ask, and we too will be spiritually healed.

Prayer:

Grant, O Lord, our poor and broken spirits’ healing. Be our guide in doubt, support in weariness, comfort in sickness and sorrow, that you may be to us an exceedingly great reward on the day of revelation of your only begotten Son; to whom will be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.