Ministry in the Midst

Let's face it. We live in the midst of a hurting and broken world. Every day there are people trying to pick up the pieces of their broken lives. We cannot escape the reality of a fallen world. However, we can realize that a fallen world cannot overcome us! What does that mean for us...empowerment! God can work through us to foster healing and restoration in the lives of others.

I would like to have the answers to the questions. I would like to help hurting people. Sometimes, I wish I could be Mr. "fix-it" man and put the pieces back together. But, maybe that is not my purpose. Instead of focusing on a ministry of "doing," (although that is part of it) maybe I would be better suited to focus on a ministry of "being." After all, I am not a doctor, a savior, or superman! Therefore, my purpose, our purpose might be better understood in terms of Henri Nouwen's idea of a "wounded healer."

"No minister can save anyone. He can only offer himself as a guide to fearful people. Yet, paradoxically, it is precisely in this guidance that the first signs of hope become visible. This is so because a shared pain is no longer paralyzing but mobilizing, when understood as a way to liberation. When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.

Through this common search, hospitality becomes community. Hospitality becomes community as it creates a unity based on the shared confession of our basic brokenness and on a shared hope...A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for new vision. Mutual confession then becomes a mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength."

My purpose is not necessarily to "do" but to "be"--a listener, a fellow sufferer, an image of the love of God in Christ, a wounded healer!

"Even when we know that we are called to be wounded healers, it is still very difficult to acknowledge that healing has to take place today. Because we are living in days when our wounds have become all too visible. Our loneliness and isolation has become so much a part of our daily experience, that we cry out for a Liberator who will take us away from our misery and bring us justice and peace.

To announce, however, that the Liberator is sitting among the poor and that the wounds are signs of hope and that today is the day of liberation, is a step very few can take. But this is exactly the announcement of the wounded healer. 'The master is coming--not tomorrow, but today, not next year, but this year, not after all our misery is passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place but right here where we are standing.'"

The One who came to us in the midst in the form of Jesus Christ, calls and empowers us to minister in the midst! In all things, may the Great Physician use his healing power to work through the lives of us who are wounded healers in a broken world!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any comfort with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
2 Corinthians 1:3-5

(Quotes from Henri Nouwen's, "The Wounded Healer")