Archive for the ‘Healing’ Tag
Does Hope Matter?
In a world marked by uncertainty, suffering, and disappointment, the question is worth asking: does hope really matter?
The story of Katherine Wolf offers a powerful answer. In 2008, at just 26 years old and the mother of a six-month-old son, Katherine suffered a catastrophic brain stem stroke. Against all expectations, she survived, enduring months in the hospital and numerous surgeries. Though she continues to live with disability, chronic pain, and significant challenges, her life has become a testimony to hope through the ministry Hope Heals. How can someone facing such ongoing struggles speak so confidently about hope?
The answer lies in understanding the difference between the hope we commonly talk about and the hope the Bible describes.
In everyday language, hope is often little more than a wish. We hope for good weather, hope our team wins, or hope circumstances improve. Such hope is rooted in uncertainty. Even in the Gospels, before the resurrection, Jesus’ followers often spoke of hope in this way: “We had hoped…” they said on the road to Emmaus after His crucifixion.
Yet after the resurrection, something changed dramatically. The New Testament writers speak of hope not as wishful thinking but as confident certainty. The writer of Hebrews describes hope as an anchor for the soul, while Paul speaks of a hope that does not disappoint. Why the difference? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The resurrection changed everything. Humanity has lived under the shadow of death since the fall in Genesis 3. Death remains the great destroyer of hope, the reality we spend our lives trying to delay or avoid. But through His resurrection, Jesus conquered death itself. For those who trust in Him, death is no longer the end but a doorway into His presence and ultimately into God’s eternal Kingdom.
This is the hope that sustained Katherine Wolf. It is also the hope that sustained my late wife Sarah and me during her illness. As doctors offered treatments and possibilities, we naturally hoped for healing. Yet over time we learned to live in a deeper hope—not based on desired outcomes, but on the certainty that Jesus had overcome death. Whatever happened, our future was secure in Him.
That same hope is available today. It does not remove pain, erase grief, solve financial pressures, or instantly fix broken relationships. Instead, it gives us a foundation that cannot be shaken by present circumstances. It allows us to face uncertainty with confidence because our future is held securely in Christ.
As we look around at a world filled with conflict, loneliness, anxiety, and fear, perhaps the most important question is: where is our hope rooted? Is it resting on circumstances that may change tomorrow, or on the unchanging reality of Christ’s resurrection?
The Church is called to be a community of hope—not offering simplistic answers or quick fixes, but walking together through life’s challenges with confidence in God’s promises. In a world desperately searching for stability and meaning, followers of Jesus have the privilege of sharing a hope that is not based on wishful thinking, but on the certainty that Christ is risen and that His Kingdom is coming.
Hope matters because it changes how we live today. It enables us to face tomorrow with courage, whatever tomorrow may bring.
Compassion or Comparison (continued)
As we ask the Holy Spirit to shape us into a people of love, one of the key lessons we see in the life of Jesus is the importance of truly seeing people. Not merely noticing them, but seeing them in a way that awakens compassion.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly responds to people with compassion. When He sees the hungry crowds, He feeds them. When He sees people who are lost and in need of guidance, He cares for them. His compassion leads Him to do the unthinkable—such as touching and healing a man with leprosy. Again and again, Jesus’ compassion moves Him to act, even when it is inconvenient.Often the obstacle is not that we fail to see people, but how we see them.
For many of us, however, compassion does not come naturally. Jesus speaks directly to this struggle when He calls His followers to love and show mercy particularly to those we see as our “enemies”.(Luke 6:27-36). It is easy to respond compassionately to those who love us whose attitude to us is less positive not so much!
The Gospels frequently contrast the way Jesus sees people with the way others do. In the story of the man born blind,(John 9) the disciples immediately ask who sinned to cause his condition. Their assumption reflects a common belief that suffering must be punishment. Instead of compassion, their first response is judgment. The disciples see a blind man, Jesus see a man who happens to be blind and who he can touch with a healing hand in such a way as to give glory to His Father in heaven.
We can easily fall into the same pattern as the disciples. When we see someone struggling—perhaps a person experiencing homelessness—it can be tempting to assume they are responsible for their situation. Comparison quietly creeps in: I would never let that happen to me. In that moment, compassion is replaced with judgment.
Jesus also exposes this mindset in the story of the prodigal son. When the father welcomes his broken son home with compassion, the elder brother reacts with anger. He immediately compares his faithfulness with his brother’s failure and concludes that he has been treated unfairly. Comparison leads to resentment and self-righteousness.
The same attitude appears in Jesus’ story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee’s prayer is full of comparison: he thanks God that he is not like other people. While it is easy to feel repulsed by his arrogance, we must be careful. Self-righteousness can slip quietly into our own thinking—in small everyday moments when we assume our way is better than everyone else’s.
Another obstacle to compassion that appears throughout the Gospels is legalism. In Luke 6, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. The religious leaders are more concerned with whether Jesus has broken their rules than with the suffering of the man in front of them. Jesus reveals that they have missed the deeper purpose of the law: love and mercy.
We must be careful not to fall into the same trap. Over time, traditions and customs can become so important that we forget the people they are meant to serve.
If we want to love like Jesus, we must learn to see people the way He does. That means taking time to listen to their stories and making sure they feel known and safe. We must be sure to ask the Holy Spirit to show us when judgement, self righteousness or legalism in some form or another creeps into our attitude. When it is these things that prompt us to compare rather than act with compassion.
Healing: Living with Faith, Mystery, and Courage
Few subjects stir as much emotion in the church as healing. Because sickness touches every life, the gift of healing feels deeply personal and often painful. It raises hope—but also questions, disappointment, and mystery. Yet healing cannot be ignored. Scripture places it at the very heart of God’s story and the church’s mission.
Healing appears throughout the Bible, from God’s self-revelation as healer in the Old Testament to the ministry of Jesus in the New. The Gospels are filled with accounts of Jesus healing the sick, but Luke 10 is especially striking. There, Jesus commissions not just the Twelve, but seventy-two unnamed disciples to heal the sick and proclaim the nearness of God’s Kingdom. This wider sending points to healing as a normal part of the church’s everyday witness, not a rare or elite activity.
Yet the difficult question remains: if healing is part of God’s Kingdom, why doesn’t everyone get healed? This question has troubled believers throughout history and is closely tied to the broader mystery of unanswered prayer. Jesus consistently linked healing to the coming of the Kingdom of God—a Kingdom that is both “now and not yet.” In Eden, there was no sickness; in the New Creation, there will be none again. The healings we see today are glimpses—tastes—of what is to come. They are signs of God’s future breaking into the present, even while we still live in a broken world.
This tension helps us hold hope and honesty together. Healing sometimes happens, and when it does, it serves as a taste of God’s coming restoration. When it does not, we remain in the mystery of the “not yet.” Even Jesus’ own ministry reflects this tension—most notably at the pool of Bethesda, where only one person was healed.
Jesus healed in many different ways: with a word, a touch, at a distance, even in stages. The common thread was simplicity and authority. He did not use elaborate prayers or perform rituals; he simply said “be healed”. Healing, as one pastor put it, is a profoundly “Jesusie” thing to do.
So why don’t we see it more often today? One reason may be fear—fear of failure, fear of disappointment, fear of trying and not seeing results. Yet Scripture gives us no permission to opt out. While we must accept the mystery, we are still invited to participate.
Healing remains part of the Spirit’s work through the church. Living faithfully in the “not yet” means being willing to try, to pray, and to trust God with the outcome. As followers of Jesus, we are called not just to believe in “Jesus-like” things—but to dare to do them.
From the Zebra Bag 