image by Daniel Bonnell

Where do you see God wanting to heal you into wholeness (shalom)? How does your Lectio reading of Isaiah 57:18-19 speak into this situation for you?

“All will be well” (vs19 The Voice) - I sometimes struggle with that phrase. How can it be true, given all we know with the world? Contrasted to that, the miracle of a seed in my garden, or witnessing a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, seems to affirm that “all will be well” and that there’s miracles we don’t always know about.

— Arthur

“See how they act, but I will still bind them” (vs. 18) — Despite all our greed and violence, God still binds us up. That’s a miracle in itself. Not just that God still binds us up, but that he will bind us up.

—Lyle

“Heal” (vs19)— I’ve learned through Watershed that there’s always a third way of thinking about things. Even at my flower shop, I’ve been meeting lots of dogs at our new location recently. I put a water dish out for them. There were no purchases made through those dog meetings, but connections were being made, and the true vocation of the shop was being realized. 

— Mel

“I see how you are and yet I will come to heal and bind you” (vs 18 CEV) — I was struck by how consoling this was. 

— Verda

“All will be well” (vs19) — This helped me lean into trust amid the anxieties of my days. It carried me through my week. 

— Cal

“God will bind up” (vs18)— This has been an encouragement to me as I’ve been dealing with stuff from my past. God will help carry my burden and heal me. 

— Carolin

I liked the preamble from the prior text, to hear the judgement there but also the surprise with how God responds. God isn’t just focused on what we think needs to be fixed or what is wrong, but that God responds with a caring healing and nurture of us. 

— Marilyn 

“I will give them a desire to praise” (vs19)— I was struck by this line in contrast to the roiling spirit that we often feel within. God will do that work within us to create a desire to praise. 

— Eldon

In reflecting on the text, I heard we don’t have to be perfect, but just engaged with God, like actors in an improv. 

— Linda

“With comfort” (vs18)— It struck me that the comfort comes after mourning, like how you can’t experience the joy if you haven’t experienced the sorrow. They’re tied together. 

— Marty

“With comfort” (vs18) — God has been comforting me through the Lectio meditations I’ve been doing three times/week. I’ve made a chart with all the words that God has spoken to me. The words have brought healing through some decisions that I’ve made as a result. 

— Paul

“Restless” — I’m feeling restless on summer break, and like I’m not doing enough. I’m remembering that I have to lean into God and trust that I’ll be given the rest I need. I don’t have to be strong, because God can work through my weakness. 

— Jen

“All will be Well! Wherever you Are” (vs. 19) — As I sat with this phrase for a bit the “You” in ‘wherever you are’ shifted from me as subject (or is that object??) to God which deepened my understanding of wellness. In my ‘believing’ heart I love the idea that God is everywhere, in mine and everyone’s ‘wherevers’ but in my anxious, subjective, suspicious mind I assume disconnection, and abandonment, much like the tortured wayward exiles of Isaiah. From that place of cynicism and mistrust “All will be Well” turns from a deep embodied mantra to a facile platitude that becomes embarrassingly trite.

Wellness, healing and comfort is only possible at a core existential level when I receive and assent to trusting that God is in the “wherever”, in every level of existence, macro and micro. I know this from experience because sadly I often see God as an abstraction or just a grand inspiring but distant idea leaving me asleep to his felt presence.

God is wherever, everywhere, and always when the distinction between sacred and secular/material and spiritual disappear. When I step into that reality, especially in a full-bodied, mind and heart kind of way I am able to sense and engage with the ‘wellness’ that floods the universal “ALL”. I am part of something bigger, the deepest kind of worship because it’s now God’s reality. 

As Paul and I shared our Lectio phrases he said to me: “All will be Well wherever you are in your prep for you upcoming Isaiah presentation.” This was a consoling word as I have felt stuck and feeling a bit trapped in the confines of the brain, unable to devotionally embrace the text with my feeling intellect. My prayer is that the spirit would remind me that my “Wherever” is always met and wrapped within God’s Everywhere. 

May the spirit help me re-imagine the “All’s” of my life soaking in God’s Wellness despite my limited vision.

— Bev

“I will bind them up…I will show them the way…I will create in them…I will heal them.” — As sometimes happens, after sharing my homily with Watershed this past Sunday, the “post-homily blues” settled over me for two days. I got snagged by an old relational issue with a family member. But today, as I just sit with these verses in the cool morning air, a renewed hopefulness has stirred up in me. What strikes me are the phrases, “I will bind them up…I will show them the way…I will create in them…I will heal them.” I see a wounded person being bound up lovingly with bandages, being shown the way to a better life, being re-created in a fecund and precisely fitting habitat for their growth…and healed to the better and new life that was promised by the initial bandages. This sounds like the story of the Good Samaritan. God is a healer, binding my ancient wounds and restoring me to health. My “post-homily blues” were lifted.

— Lydia

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