Healing Touch

     One of our sons and his wife just had twin boys.  They are home now but they spent two weeks in NICU at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.  One of the insights that the medical staff emphasized with the new parents is the importance of touch.  They encouraged the parents to hold their babies as much as possible.  Skin to skin contact is vital.  I recently read, “In a study initiated by the Touch Research Institute, preemies who were given a fifteen-minute massage three times a day gained 47 percent more weight and were released from the hospital six days sooner than preemies who were simply fed and changed.” (A Million Little Miracles, Mark Batterson, 132, 133).  Touch matters. 
     I was reminded of a miracle story in the gospel of Mark where Jesus healed a leper.  Jesus can heal with just a word but in that instance, we are told, “he reached out his hand and touched the man” (Mark 1:41).  Through his touch and command the leper was cleansed!  Do not blow past this detail about Jesus touching this man.  A leper in that culture would have experienced being isolated and ostracized from his community.  He would have had to yell “unclean, unclean” everywhere he went so that people could stay away from him!  Leprosy frightened everyone.  The leper could not kiss his wife, hold his children, work a job, shake the hand of a friend, or receive a hug.  Yet, in the midst of that loneliness Jesus stepped in and healed the leper’s body and touched his soul.  Dr. Paul Brand, a doctor doing medical missionary work in India, once placed his hand on the shoulder of a leper he was trying to help.  The man began to weep.  Dr. Brand apologized thinking he had hurt the man; through the interpreter he asked why the leper was crying.  The man responded that he was crying because until he had come to that missionary clinic no one had touched him for many years.  It has been said, “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty” (The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey, 173).  Touch can be life to a person drowning in rejection. Touch is powerful.  Particularly the touch of the Son of God!   
     I love the compassion of Jesus who saw more than the disease but a despised and rejected person.  He saw someone who was marginalized and hurting and he reached out.  Who in our lives is hard to touch?  Who do we have a difficult time welcoming?  I have come alongside people over the years with addictions and mental health issues.  Let’s be honest, it’s exhausting.  However, it is also rewarding and it’s God’s call to Christians.  To see a person begin to thrive and flourish is one of the great joys of life.  In the course of thirty years of ministry, I have officiated at many funerals.  I can tell you when our lives end and those who loved us gather at a celebration of life what they talk about the most are the ways we touched them.  The hugs, the kind words, the thoughtful gifts, the funny moments that made them smile.  Most of us will not interact with an actual leper but we will have opportunities to reach out to the lonely, the hurting, the neglected, and forgotten.  From prisoners to foster children there are people in our society who want to be seen and to know that they matter to others.  Let’s do our part in helping to heal others, let’s lean in and positively touch them in simple, compassionate ways.    
Pastor Derek Dickinson
Journey Christian Church