Gracism: The Art of InclusionSample

I Will Heal With You

On tilt. Are you familiar with that phrase? If you know anything about pinball machines, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. When playing pinball, if a player physically shook a machine too hard, the whole system would pause and with a flashing sign indicate that it had gone “on tilt” and was inoperable for a short period.

Have you been noticing that just like the pinball machine, our world has been shaken? We’ve experienced one crisis right after another. It has become increasingly difficult to make progress in the areas of reconciliation, peace, and bridge building. We have gone on tilt!

You might even find yourself in the ranks of those who have begun to shut down and wonder what to do next in this sometimes paralyzing work. Let me give you some encouragement. Your next step might not be to do anything. What if the bridge-building tool that we have been missing in the midst of this extreme unrest does not involve a complicated strategy of doing?

In 1 Corinthians 12, when the apostle Paul compares the church community to the interconnected nature of the human body, he writes in verse 26, “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (NIV).

Empathy is suffering with those who suffer. Let us each examine ourselves to ask: Will I listen, learn, experience, and imagine the hurt that others are feeling? Am I willing to walk on your path with you and share in your burdens? Am I willing to do this even toward people of a different racial or ethnic background than myself? If I can feel with you, then I can heal with you. This is the eighth saying of a gracist: “I will heal with you.”

Don’t get me wrong. As we pursue healing, there is work to be done. Suffering with others is not just about feeling. There will be sacrifice, hard work of building trust, and strategic work cultivating a healthy community. But before we start doing, we can pause to feel the pain of the moment.

The body doesn’t heal by ignoring the parts that are suffering. The same is true about the body of Christ. We actually work together to become a multicultural community of wounded healers that experience each other’s pain together on our path toward healing.

Who in your world is hurting and needs you to step in and say, “I will heal with you”?

Adapted from Gracism: The Art of Inclusion. Copyright ©2023 by David A. Anderson with David Heiliger. Used by permission. For more information, please visit www.ivpress.com/gracism.