Healing Marks
Описание книги
Bruce Epperly calls Healing Marks a «very personal book» as it comes from over thirty years of experiencing the healing stories of Jesus. From his early years as a young college professor, he sought to make sense of the growing interest in complementary and alternative medicine. For seventeen years, Bruce was a chaplain and professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and was among the first to teach courses on spirituality and medicine at a major medical school. While embracing Jesus' healing ministry as a pastor, professor, reiki teacher, and spiritual guide, he has also wrestled with the meaning of Jesus' healing ministry and God's role in healing and sickness in a personal way as a pastor, friend, child, spouse, and parent, in hospital rooms, hospices, gravesides, and healing services. «I have heard testimonies about the power of God to cure illness, but I have also sat at the bedside of dying friends and congregants, who have done everything right, according to the principles of their faith traditions and philosophies – personal and intercessory prayers, positive thinking and affirmations, meditation and diet, complementary medical treatments, and visits to faith healers and energy workers – along with the best modern medicine has to offer in treatment and palliation,» says Bruce. Each chapter includes a spiritual practice related to the healing story being considered that is easily shaped for the reader's personal and spiritual needs. Rev. Epperly also includes questions and spiritual practices for group study and spiritual formation at the end of the book. Chapter titles include Transforming Faith, Forgiveness and Healing, Healing Takes Time, Healing Broken Spirits, A Healing Lifestyle, Healing in a Pluralistic Age, and God, Why am I Sick?.
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Praise for Healing Marks
Healing Marks is truly inspirational, timely, insightful, and wise. Epperly shares his breadth and depth of knowledge in deft and accessible ways. He invites us to broaden our understanding and experience of spirituality by bringing together faith, health, body, mind, in ways that are relevant for everyday living as well as tackling the big questions of life. Through the lens of the Gospel of Mark, Epperly pushes beyond false divisions between mystical faith and rational thought and guides us into a greater knowledge, experience, and practice of hope, healing, and wholeness. This honest and challenging book engages hard questions rather than offering up disruptive theological platitudes or pathways of avoidance. Healing Marks is deep, profound, and useful. Individuals and groups will be rejuvenated by the experience.
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Mark, like the other gospels, gives us a glimpse of Jesus’ life and ministry, and not the whole story. Indeed, if we look specifically at the healing stories, none of them can be encompassed by the written word. How can we describe what happened to the woman with the flow of blood in the short paragraph included in the gospel? Her experience – or that of Jairus and his family – leap from the page into our hearts, hands, and imaginations, inspiring us to be God’s healing partners and good news bearers in our time. As John’s Gospel proclaims, “There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:24). God’s wisdom, embodied in the healer from Nazareth, is always more than we can imagine or fathom. No paragraph-long story can encompass the intricate tapestry of fear, hope, and amazement that characterize every gospel healing narrative or our own quests for healing and wholeness.
Mark’s intent is to invite us to experience the good news of Jesus by giving us a portrait of his acts and teaching. The heart of Mark’s gospel can be found in his description of the first days of Jesus’ ministry:
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