I began thinking about this topic with regard to the summertime in the south, the heat and images of change and coolness. But a recent bad fall led me to an enforced rest and a new concern over personal and physical safety. I began to see another side of a “time apart” when we are sometime thrust into a position where we are forced to look at our relationship with God and at our lives. Then is when we begin to wonder at our misdirected attention to what we do versus how we trust God to operate in our lives.

So as I read the Bible this morning and wandered into the following text, I was not surprised to find exactly the image that was already in my head. Spiritual synchronicity, perhaps. It was as if the text resonated with the dreams from the night before.

Here is the scripture:

One Sabbath Jesus went to eat a meal at the home of one of the leading Pharisees; and people were watching Jesus closely. A man whose legs and arms were swollen came to Jesus, and Jesus spoke up and asked the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, “Does our Law allow healing on the Sabbath or not?”

But they would not say a thing. Jesus took the man, healed him, and sent him away. Then he said to them, “If any one of you had a child or an ox that happened to fall in a well on a Sabbath, would you not pull it out at once on the Sabbath itself? ”But they were not able to answer him about this. Matthew 14: 1-6. The Holy Bible, Good News Translation.

I can certainly identify with this man with the swollen arms and legs, although in my situation it was my right leg, particularly the knee, that was the victim. But I began to wonder about healing and our rules, or what we think are our rules, that govern healing and wholeness. I began to think and to wonder how we deal with healing and with our understanding of Sabbath and of safety/security.

How do we deal with the tension and the struggle of healing and yet live in the real world that lacks such safe places? What about those who have the real work of establishing and protecting that safe place for us? How can we learn to imagine God as one who never abandons us? God who will heal, rescue, and continue to restore us and make us whole. God who will not “leave us in a well.” Even the “teachers of the Law and the Pharisees” could not answer Jesus’ question about a get-real situation. This tension is nothing new.

Then I realized that for the family of Natalee Holloway and for others whose children have “fallen into a well,” and for London, the victims and families of the victims of the horrendous bombings, this is a very serious question indeed. This whole summer has been about seeking, rescuing, and restoring safety.

In this issue of ecumininet™ online! our interviews, articles, and poetry point us to many different ways of seeing this tension of Sabbath and Security. We are given profound and personal viewpoints from many perspectives of faith and life. Ecumininet™ online! is honored to have such a diverse blending of thoughts, photography, experience, honesty, and sharing from our personal interviews to our writers and photographers. It is our hope that through the lens of these particular experiences you will receive new images for refreshing your vision and nourishing your soul. An oasis of wisdom for these difficult months. Coolness for a hot topic.

Praying for all of our work toward spiritual and global integrity.

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