Healers

When I finish my seminars on Grace and Worship I usually make the statement: "The church could easily be about to see her finest days". When we seek to understand, grasp and share grace we become, as Henri Nouwen writes. "wounded healers", the grace that heals and liberates us we extend to others, friend and enemy alike. Grace releases us from the desperation of a faith that is upheld by one's own strength. Grace brings us all onto the plateau where all are equal, where all are loved and where all are extened forgiveness. The 21st Century church needs to once again to encounter grace, a grace that renders the spiritual “pleadings”, works and endeavours, that are perfomed to gain “something more” as unnecessary, a grace that reveals our strivings as having, as Paul writes in Ephesians 4, "fallen from grace". When we plead for forgiveness from those who we have hurt and marginalised, when we cease our moral crusades and choose love and hope, when our songs are silenced as we are rendered awestruck by the majesty, the glory and the unbelievable improbability of God's love for us, then we may see Christ's body once more on this earth as his love and grace reaches out through us.