Come Healing



Hi Eugene,

I walked up the mountain yesterday after church, on the day of our Lord's rising.  Knowing you, I am sure you must have done the same.

O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow

 The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

 And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

This Cohen song played as I ascended.  It was the first moment in a long time that I was allowed to feel the world's pain.

During the morning's church service, when every single song is about "personal salvation," I felt like by "atonement" we meant For God so hated the world that he killed his only son.

Like how a Dylan song goes, "Nobody feels any pain..."

Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace

 O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

 O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart

Tears finally came out of me when I heard the line And none of us deserving the cruelty or the grace.

I am sure many Christians would say this is bad theology.  We say, of course we deserve the cruelty because we sinned and still do, and of course we do not deserve grace because grace is, even by its very definition, unmerited favor.

But I have yet to meet a Christian who does not whine.  Every whining Christian whines even when he knows the very predicament he's whining about is, in ways big and small, a result of his sinful nature and action.

It goes without saying, despite how we define grace, we all act like God owes us something, our family and friends owe us something, the government owes us something, the world owes us something.

Yet when we hear words of honesty, we all suddenly turn into good theologians.  How could there be healing if there is no honesty?

God's Temple is called a house of prayer, but we have turned it into a bog of lies.

O troubled dust concealing
An undivided love
The heart beneath is teaching
To the broken heart above

 Let the heavens falter
Let the earth proclaim
Come healing of the altar
Come healing of the name

 O longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O longing of the arteries
To purify the blood

 And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

Many little buds were lifted on my way up the mountain.

I was one of them.

Yours, Alex

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