Editorial April 15, 1996 Issue

The naturalness of healing and restoration

Mary Metzner Trammell

Like sun-shafts burning through the morning fog. Like green shoots pushing up through the still-frozen earth. Like fragrant cornbread rising from dough in the oven. Or (as the ancient Middle Easterners used to say) like the waters of a great, running river bringing life to a desert wasteland. That's the way spiritual healing comes. Naturally. Inevitably. And in spite of all appearances to the contrary.

You can see why—from the early Hebrews right through to the early Christians—Biblical writers often pictured the graciousness of God as an enormous, outflowing, life-giving river. After all, they lived in a desert land bordering on the semi-stagnant Dead Sea. There fish, fowl, and vegetation struggle desperately to survive—or don't survive at all.

So the idea of "living waters" forever flowing and refreshing the land with cool, pure streams seemed incomparably wonderful to the people of Palestine (Jer. 2:13). And they loved to think of God's goodness as pouring forth in healthful streams of bounty—providing drink for everyone, changing salt water to fresh, restocking the lakes with fish, filling the skies with birds, sustaining luxuriant trees that bear fruit constantly

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The naturalness of healing and restoration

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