Food for the Wilderness
Daily Devotion
May 28, 2020
Ann Beck, Pastoral Associate
This Pentecost Sunday during worship there will be time for a blessing of our vocations, for marking our hands with a cross to honor and bless the work that each of us does in Jesus name in the world. It will be a meaningful blessing ritual, an important reminder of our call to live out our faith in daily life.
We don’t often know how God is using our words and actions to bring about good, but sometimes, unexpectedly, we can experience the grace of it ourselves.
A few weeks ago I began therapy on my healing wrist, meeting with an Occupational Therapist in a virtual visit. She was great at making the online visit feel almost normal, and it was surprising how well we were able to connect through a screen, working through a variety of mobility tests and exercises. After going through the physical routines she reframed the process for me, describing how my brain needs to be reconditioned to send impulses to the wrist/arm that was immobilized for weeks in a cast. As she held up her hand, massaging it with the other as an example, my own hands instinctively mirrored her actions as she gently instructed me to “bring kind attention” to my healing hand. I loved the idea behind those words but it also made me laugh out loud, so I had to explain that after surgery and casting I had named my useless arm “Cousin It”, a humorous but not at all kind reference! Then I continued, sharing that the other arm, the good arm, had recently been rebelling, in a sense. That it was letting me know it was tired, feeling overworked, wondering when its partner was going to take up its share of the load: I’d begun referring to my right arm as “Martha”.
What possessed me to use that biblical reference with her, a stranger, in that very secular setting? Holy Spirit possessed? It came out as natural as a comment on the weather, not stopping to think if she would relate to the scriptural background. And the spirit continued working, for as I looked at my resting arm, we said its new name out loud at the same time – “Mary”. Then she added, “so in the healing, let your right arm wash the foot of your left”.
Christ was present. The session moved on, but it was a holy moment that stays with me. Hands were blessed, with caring attention. My words were blessed, spoken with an open heart. And the OT, in the midst of a routine therapy visit – her vocation, revealed Christ’s love through her response, a blessing for us both.
How simple it can be. Holy God, let your Spirit flow through our daily lives, that all whom we encounter will experience kind attention, a reflection of your love. Amen.