We believe love heals. It is the ground of everything: a love that holds and heals, and makes whole again. This is not a love that we can turn on like medicine, or inject into a particular need, but a love that gives of itself for another’s need. That is a big principle: a love that gives of itself for another’s need.

 

It means we support the other, care for, pray for, give of ourselves, for someone else. We already do that as a congregation daily through the visiting, caring, supporting, through the sacrament.  These are all acts that are part of the healing ministry of the church. It comes from trusting a God who recognises the needs of people and whose intent is for us all to live in wholeness with self, each other and God.

 

It is not magic. It is just love and so in our healing service, where we lay on hands, sit in silence, hold people in prayer, makes space for that love to affect us in ways that do not have opportunity amid lives that are busy and less open to God’s love.

 

Healing is not curing: it is making space for possibilities and knowing the catalyst for those possibilities is God’s healing grace and generous forgiveness. It makes space to let God unbind us from that which traps us. It is a space that enables us to let go and let God hold, love, redeem and forgive that which prevents us from being fully alive in the world…