Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. - James 5:16
It's funny how we can read the same verse over and over through the years and then one day it just hits us different. That is how it is for me this morning. I am hurting, due, I think, to someone elses pain. Mine is a minor pain, perhaps - but more than I anticipated at this juncture. I suppose have always read James 5:16 with the understanding that others are healed as I pray for them and I am healed as they pray for me. (I am not writing today about the role of confession, though it plays a parallel role to prayer in this passage.) Today I read and receive that I must pray for that person whose pain has injured me - and that in this I will find healing. What good news this is to victims of abuse, or indeed all of us who suffer the wounds of a trangressor (no matter how small) - that we can take ownership of our own healing process - through forgiveness and prayer for that other person who has hurt us.
This is not a new concept for me. Forgiveness as the key to healing has been painfully knitted into the fabric of my scars. Scars, for the most part, don't hurt once they have completely healed. It does seem, however, that once in a while there is a mysterious phantom ache beneath the surface. But my scars are old now, and this unexpected, though much needed reminder comes to me today in a new place of pain and numbness.
