Keep Imagining
Biblical Stories of Healing
Reflection By Robbin Brent
The word faith is often understood as accepting something you can’t understand. People often say: “Such and such can’t be explained, you simply have to believe it.” However, when Jesus talks about faith, he means first of all to trust unreservedly that you are loved, so that you can abandon every false way of obtaining love. … It’s a question here of trusting in God’s love. The Greek word for faith is pistis, which means, literally, trust. Whenever Jesus says to people he has healed: “Your faith has saved you,” he is saying that they have found new life because they have surrendered in complete trust to the love of God revealed in him.
- Henri Nouwen
In the many stories of healing from our tradition, we often encounter the essential role that faith plays in the healing process. Whether it’s the friends who lower the paralyzed man through the roof to Jesus (Mark 2:1-12), or the centurion who believes that Jesus can heal his servant with a word (Matthew 8:5-13), these stories reveal the power of a faith that persists in the face of obstacles and doubts.
Many of us have discovered that faith is not about certainty or a lack of questions, but about the willingness to keep imagining life in a certain way, a way that is grounded in the goodness and love of God. Even when challenging circumstances seem to contradict that vision, faith encourages us to keep trusting in the deeper reality of God’s healing presence.
As we continue to reflect on these stories, we can keep imagining our lives and our world through the lens of faith, trusting that God’s love is always at work, even in the darkest of times.
Making It Personal: How has faith played a role in your own journey of healing? What would it look like to keep imagining your life in a way that is grounded in God’s love this week?