A. To begin with let's make a distinction between curing and healing. Someone who is ill because they have a disease is looking for a cure. The cure is accomplished by the attention of a physician and proper medicine. Prayer can help by mobilizing the healing resources within the patient and clearing the way for the medicine to work properly and minimize side effects. Someone who is hurting because they have somehow been damaged need healing to restore their wholeness. Prayer can help in the same was as above and by providing a channel for God to offer the gift of healing.

We will explore three ways we are damaged, grieve and need healing.

1. First is the loss of something important that we had.
2. Second is the absence of what we wanted but was never there.
3. Third is the pain of being denied what was there.

B. One of the ways we may be used by God as instruments of healing is by listening. In James 5:16 we are advised; "Confess your sins to each other so that you may be healed. The prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective." Tom Weakley, who previously served on this committee, advised the telling of our stories as a means of healing, and that we encourage them by good listening.

I want to give you some experience in doing this by telling three very brief stories of things that happened to you: one from early childhood, one when you were a teen or young adult, and one more recently. I want you to pair up with someone, decide who will be first to tell their stories, and who will be first to be listener then I will give you more instructions.

Listeners may prepare yourselves by:

1. Praying that God will use you as a channel of healing and will give you whatever faith, discernment, and love is needed.
2. Asking God to gently remove anything in you that might get in the way and affirming that God can use you despite these things.
3. Feeling love and compassion for the person to whom you will be listening.
4. Asking God to give you discernment of the needs of that person.
5. Listening for common elements in each of the three stories.
6. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to share your insights with that person when they have finished telling the three stories.

Story tellers may prepare themselves simply by praying to be open to the Holy Spirit to guide them in selecting what stories to tell, and to trust the listener's caring and confidentiality. Then, without any more thought about it, share with your listener whatever comes to your mind.

You will have 12 minutes for this then I will signal you to switch roles.

C. Now I want to explore how we react when we suffer damaged from losses. These can include the sudden loss of things we hold dear such as the loss of our home by fire, flood, tornado, or eminent domain, the loss of personal property by burglary, or the sudden death of someone we love. This can happen to us personally, as a family, church or community, or as a nation. These things can send us for a loop.

One morning everything began as usual. People went to work high up in their offices. Other people boarded airplanes for routine trips. The twin towers stood proudly against the blue sky in the sunshine like in this picture.

Then suddenly they are smoldering ruins and we are all in shock. Our world has changed. The skyline of New York looks different now. There is a big ugly hole in the ground where the towers once stood. The world feels different now. Some of our security has been replaced with fear. What will happen next? There is self-doubt, how could this have happened without anyone suspecting? We are angry, we want to strike back. We forget the mistakes of the past like the innocent Japanese-Americans who were held in prison camps during world war 2. We want to close our borders and build an anti-missile shield. We blame our faltering economy and our inability to return to normal on the attack. But gradually we are regaining our confidence and setting new goals for ourselves as a nation.

The loop looks like this:

Other losses are less traumatic, but just as distressful;

The minister was more than just a pastor, but also a close friend, then there is a change and someone new has come and things are different. They were happily married then the marriage began to fall apart, until there was a divorce. For each of them it means the loss of a spouse and companion. for the children it meant loss of a home and family. For the grandparents it meant the loss of a son or daughter-in-law. When the last child goes off to college or Grandmother goes to the nursing home the house becomes an empty nest. The company goes bankrupt and plunges everyone into financial crisis. I ran over our cat while backing the car into the garage on a snowy night.

Then there are physical bodily losses that we can never get back. A lovely high school girl headed for a championship year as a track star, lost her leg above the knee to cancer. She and her parents wrote about her experience in a book, "What God gives when Life Takes Away." She was able to overcome her loss and go on to help others with similar losses and became a ski instructor in Colorado. A college professor suffers a stroke and is forced to retire. MS robs someone of their job, and their sense of self-worth. A friend of mine upon reaching middle age lost his eyesight. Many of us through aging, lose our hair, our memory, our mobility, or our independence. When these things happen we may go through the same grief process loop. We come out of it as different persons and healing prayer can help us redefine ourselves as children of God, and discover how we are called to and equipped for new ministries.

Healing Prayer can help people resolve many of the problems that interfere with the grief process. There may be the need for forgiveness toward the person who caused our loss, toward God, or toward our self. Bob Libby has written a wonderful "Forgiveness Book" in which he tells many stories about healing through forgiveness. In her book, "Godly Glimpses, Discoveries of the Love That Heals." Peggy Eastman describes her journey of recovery following the death of two husbands. It is important for us to be good listeners, to discern problems interfering with healthy grief, and to pray patiently with those who have suffered losses.

Another form of loss is deprivation. We feel deprived of something we never had. Judith MacNutt told a story about a woman who never had a chance to say good-bye to her father when he died. She was only a little girl and not allowed in the hospital room but sat outside in the hall. Her mother came out, took the girl by the arm, and as they left the hospital she said, "Your father is dead, and I don't want you to ever mention him again." Judith took the woman to Jesus in prayer for healing. In prayer the woman went back in her memory to that chair in the hall outside her father's hospital room and waited for Jesus. When Jesus came he took her by the hand and brought her into the room where her father was dying. She climbed up on the bed and hugged him and told him how much she loved him. Then Jesus asked, "Will it be all right for him to go with me now?" Happily she gave permission for her father to go with Jesus and said good-bye. With that came the healing of her loss and the completion of her grief.

A woman came to our prayer group grieving. Her only teenage daughter had just been operated on for uterine cancer and would never have any children. She suddenly realized that she had been deprived of all the grandchildren she had dreamed of and hoped for. As we prayed with her, Jesus took her in her imagination back to a Baptism service at her church when the pastor had brought a newly baptized baby to the congregation and had told them, "This is your baby now." In her imaginative prayer, Jesus took that little baby, placed it in her arms and comforted her. Then she realized with rejoicing that she was the grandmother of all the children in her church.

An adopted child abandoned as a baby, had not been treated very well and always felt deprived of his father's love. Then through a prayer process called "Faith Imagination" he was led by a prayer partner to go back to being a little baby and imagine Jesus taking him in his arms. Through that prayer Jesus was able to fulfill all the parental love that had been missing.

Tilda Norberg and Robert Webber in their book, "Stretch Out Your Hand, Exploring Healing Prayer." describe this Faith Imagination process this way: "In this process, using our natural, human capacity for imaginative thought, we invite Jesus to join us where we hurt. This may mean going back in time with Jesus to a painful memory and imaginatively reliving it with Jesus present." My own most dramatic personal healing was through the reframing of such a traumatic childhood memory.

There is yet another form of loss that can respond to this kind of prayer. That is rejection. There was an element of rejection in the case of the adopted child who felt deprived of parental love. Rejection can bring about a loss of self-esteem, a feeling that something must be wrong with me; what am I missing that other people seem to have? After you lost your job, your resume` seemed so good, the best you could honestly make it, but when you applied for a new job, you were rejected. Sometimes the ending of a romance or a marriage is accompanied with feelings of rejection.

Feelings of rejection may come from something as simple as having someone stop sending you Christmas cards, or no longer stopping to visit.

In her book, Tilda Norberg tells of a woman who had been abused by her father as a child. In prayer she envisioned herself lying on her bed, filthy dirty, then Jesus came into her prayer. He took her by the hand and led her out to a stream where he gently and lovingly bathed her. She came up out of the water a new person as if she had just been baptized. Then Jesus gently brushed her hair and dressed her in gorgeous new clothes. Following that prayer she was healed and found a new self-confidence.

Bob Libby tells of Jim whose mother-in-law had rejected him and never approved of his marriage to her daughter. While on a pilgrimage to Yugoslavia a priest told Jim to pray: "Come, Holy Spirit, and kindle the fire of love within me." For 40 years Jim had hated and nursed resentment against his mother-in-law until it became a terrible festering wound that he carried around everywhere he went. But he continued to pray even though it was difficult in regard to his mother-in-law. But gradually the resentment was healed and he was able to forgive her.

When I was young I had astigmatism so bad that I couldn't see to catch or hit a baseball. I didn't know that my eyes were bad, but I felt rejected when nobody wanted me to play on their baseball team. Even after I got glasses, I felt unloved and rejected when people disagreed with me. Then in prayer Jesus said, "You don't know God very well, do you, now listen." So I listened and this is what I heard, "You are my beloved, and I am delighted with you." Wow! And I still believe it! Henri Nouwen's book, "Life of the Beloved" reinforced my new self-image.

D. I want you to try this kind of healing prayer. Please find your listening partner and try praying with each other. Decide who will pray for healing, and who will listen and offer silent prayer support. The person who is to be the listener will pray for the person seeking healing, and may offer encouragement or ask for clarification as the prayer time proceeds. The person praying for healing will:

1. Identify some loss, deprivation, or rejection you remember having suffered and for which you would like some healing. Perhaps it may be something revealed in the listening session, or perhaps some other hurt that you feel needs healing. It is best to begin with some little hurt, not the most traumatic. Share it with your prayer listener. You may hold hands or lay on hands for prayer if you are both comfortable with that.
2. In imaginative prayer go back and re-experience the feelings you had as vividly as possible. Because this prayer will be in your imagination you must tell your partner how you feel and what is happening as you go along.
3. When you are really feeling the intensity of that pain again, invite Jesus, however you may envision him, into that memory. Say: "Jesus be with me in this painful time, speak to me and/or show me what you want me to do."
4. Pay attention in your imagination to what happens next. Let Jesus appear in your mind's eye. Let Jesus speak in your mind's ear. Let your body experience Jesus' presence. How does Jesus respond? What does he do? What does he say. Be patient and let the experience play out. Then share what has happened with your prayer listener.
5. If nothing discernible has happened trust that the Holy Spirit may be working some inner healing miracle.
6. If you feel that there is need for more healing, arrange for more prayers.
7. Finally thank your prayer partner and thank God for whatever has happened and pray that the healing may continue until your sense of wholeness is fully restored.

In this exercise please switch roles and continue.

When you are finished praying for each other you may want to share your experience with the whole group?

Be aware that as you listen to the needs of another person your own needs may surface and need to be handled. If you want to use this form of prayer in your church or prayer group I suggest that you read the book "Stretch Out Your Hand" by Norberg and Webber.

Bob Boutwell, chairperson of the Committee on the Healing Ministry of the Vermont Conference of the United Church of Christ.