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January 7

God’s Healing Presence

To know God and to live in God’s presence is not only to live in truth and light, but also to live in wholeness and well-being. This is what we grow into through God’s enabling, our participation in the community of faith and the practice of the spiritual disciplines.

When we live only in and for ourselves we do damage to the very fabric of our being. We were never meant to be the center of life. God is at the center and we are invited to live life to the full with all our powers and energies to the glory of God.

But since we have placed ourselves at the center and are selfish and wayward, we need to be healed and restored. In fact, first and foremost, we need to be turned around. This is the call to conversion.

This restorative work is the genius of God. God knows not only how to create well, but how to re-create well when things have gone wrong. God can make all things new.

St. Augustine speaks about this. He writes: “[God] has prepared for us the medicines of faith and applied them to the maladies of the whole world.”7

Through God’s presence, his word, and his creative Spirit, God

renews all things. In Christ there is healing, not only for all people, but also for every dimension of life, and the whole creation.

Healing can come to my inner being, but also to my relationships, to my family, even to the place I work, and in a small way to the nation as a whole. One day, the whole world will know this healing and restoration.

Reflection

Where does the healing presence of God need to come into my life and in our world?