Sunday, October 12, 2025

Meditation

One of the most surprising things I discovered when we moved to Arizona was how every back yard was enclosed with a six foot tall cinder block wall. That and the focus on the back yard created a neighborhood that often felt less like a community and more like a series of adjacent properties. In neighborhoods like this, not knowing your neighbors was incredibly common. People had a tendency of living in their backyards, and driving everywhere else they wanted to go. In other words, even in a neighborhood made up of hundreds of homes, it is easy to feel alone, especially during the middle of the day.

We sometimes look at isolation as physical only and if we simply are around others then we won’t be alone. But isolation can happen even in the company of others. We can feel isolated when we are excluded from a family, a group, or even at a place of work. We feel alone when an illness stands between us and everything we once loved. And that is where we meet the men with leprosy this day. In just about every way they were isolated. They physically were isolated, living among themselves, separated from their families, homes, and communities. There was a spiritual isolation as well, as they were far from anything approaching hope.

But then Jesus comes to them in their isolation and hopelessness and does what He alone is able to do, to bring about restoration not only of body, but of spirit, at least in the life of one of these men. As we look today at a world that is filled with so much isolation and pain, we look even more to the one who came into this world and even our lives to bring deep connection. We find that with Jesus we are deeply connected to His grace and mercy, and the hope that He alone gives to us.