What miracles look like by Stewart Perry
Last week across the 3 parishes of Burleigh Heads, Gold Coast South (Palm Beach), and Robina/Mermaid Beach we started talking about “Deep Care”. When the 3 clergy, Mary-Anne, Eron and I caught up on Monday morning the feedback for this theme was strikingly profound. I think each of us anticipated that it was an important theme to focus on but were a little taken a-back by how quickly this has resonated with people.
3 churches working together is a bit of a miracle in and of itself but we are in a bit of a season of miracles in terms of our bible readings. Which has made me wonder – what do miracles look like and what is their relationship to deep care?
I was talking to the Headmaster of All Saints Anglican School, Patrick Wallas after church on Sunday. He’d watched our service online and was one of the many who was impacted by the idea of deep care. He mentioned a poem that came to his mind and I have since discovered it and thought, like Patrick, that it was indeed a perfect example of not only what miracles can look like but also their relationship to deep care.
The poem is based on the bible passage where people lower the paralysed man through the roof so that Jesus can heal him. You’ll find the passage in either Mark 2 or Luke 5. The poem “Miracle” by Seamus Heaney is really moving and shifts our view on where miracles really are:
Not the one who takes up his bed and walks
But the ones who have known him all along
And carry him in —
Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked
In their backs, the stretcher handles
Slippery with sweat. And no let up
Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable
and raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.
Be mindful of them as they stand and wait
For the burn of the paid out ropes to cool,
Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity
To pass, those who had known him all along. (Seamus Heaney)
The poem helps us to recognise that as much as there is a miracle healing of the paralysed man, don’t miss the miracle of the friends that carried him and did all the work to get him to Jesus. A radical act of deep care.
Deep care in this instance can lead to a miracle but also deep care in and of itself is a miracle.
I was talking to someone at our “Community Connect” on Thursday who was reflecting on a few people who she could identify had their lives transformed by deep care.
Deep care might not always lead to the lame walking and the blind seeing but it is deeply transformative, it is a miracle. One that we can all be participants and recipients in.
I hope you can both experience and share the miracle of deep care.
Blessings
Stewart