A MESSAGE FROM REV. KAREN KINNEY: IN THE MIDST OF PAINFUL TIMES
This Sunday, July 6, our worship will be a Service of Healing and Wholeness, which is a time that helps us name our need for healing and rely on the Holy Spirit’s power to bring us to a state of wholeness. But what is healing and what is wholeness.
Healing is different from curing. We tend to use 
healing as cure, but the two are different and we see that in the stories of healing in the Bible. Curing refers to the elimination of disease or illness, often through medical or surgical intervention, aiming to restore the body to its previous healthy state. Healing, on the other hand, is a broader, more holistic process of becoming whole, encompassing physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, and can occur even when a cure is not possible. Healing can be part of the journey toward wholeness, but wholeness encompasses a broader and more enduring state of well-being.
In our service on Sunday, we will have the opportunity to name that for which we need healing – maybe it is our pain or anger at a situation, past or present. Maybe it is a feeling of loneliness. Maybe it is grief we are experiencing. Maybe…and you fill in the blank.
We will have time to acknowledge vulnerability, seek God’s comfort, and experience reconciliation with God and others. Even if we are sad, grieving, in physical, spiritual or emotional pain, we can be healed and begin to feel a sense of wholeness through the Holy Spirit’s power.
Just as Jeremiah relied on God, acknowledging God’s power and love for God’s people, this service helps us to do the same, acknowledging God as the source of healing and wholeness, inviting all of us to trust in God to guide us, restoring and renewing us.
In our service, we will have the opportunity to consider and write down our need for healing. We will have communion and prayer stations where we can be prayed for and anointed with oil. We will have a litany for healing. We will have wonderful music.
And, while the service will look a bit different, we will explain it all along the way and the bulletin will reflect those differences. We will end on a hopeful, joy-filled note that moves us to the following two Sundays of planting and building and hearing about a new covenant God is making.
If you are worshiping online and would like a home visit for communion and anointing, please email me at kkinney@fpc-bethlehem.org. I hope to see you this Sunday.
Blessings,
Pastor Karen