Healing In Community

God sets us in communities for our healing. Very rarely are we left alone to heal. And yet, sometimes taking a break from community is crucial for the healing to take hold.

In the healing stories in Matthew 9 we’ve looked at this week, we see that sometimes community is the one thing that really saves us. The demon-possessed person could not get there without help - they were brought by friends. The scripture says, “...a person who was demon-possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus” (Matthew 9:32).

And then sometimes there’s an invitation to take a bit of a break from community. After healing the two blind people in Matthew 9, Jesus invited them to not speak about this but to ponder the moment themselves. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.” But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region (Matthew 9:20-31).

They went about telling everyone when Jesus asked them not to. Don’ you wonder if Jesus was inviting them into a deeper faith, inviting them to reflect on what God was up to in their lives? And they missed it.

So the question today isn’t whether we need community in our journey towards healing and growth. The question the Spirit is asking is this: what relationship to community will lead to the most flourishing right now for you to be more than you were before? It may mean diving in more deeply to community and finding the strength to share things you haven’t before; it may mean pulling back a bit and letting God deepen the work in you before you share it. One way or the other it will take courage.

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

-Rita Dove, US poet laureate