Rev MaryGean Cope

Tag: healing

  • The Power of Love

    The Power of Love

    Christ has conquered death. He lived life fully and showed us how to do the same. He suffered like we suffer, resisted temptation like we resist it, loved like we’re called to love. And then he died. And then he rose.

    And that changes everything.

    Not because we get a free pass now. Not because our lives suddenly get easy. But because death isn’t the last word anymore. Because evil isn’t the final answer. Because God’s faithfulness is deeper and stronger than everything that wants to crush us.

    This is the promise of Easter. Not that we won’t suffer. Jesus suffered. But that suffering doesn’t have the power to destroy what matters. That love is stronger than death. That faithfulness lasts beyond the grave.

    When you’re facing something hard—when you’re sick, when you’re grieving, when you’re facing loss—you need that promise. You need to know that this isn’t all there is. That God hasn’t abandoned you. That even in the darkest part, even in death itself, God’s love is at work.

    And here’s the thing: Jesus showed us that. He didn’t explain it from a distance. He came and lived it and died it and rose from it. He met us in the place where we’re most afraid. And he came out the other side.

    That’s the hope we cling to. Not everything working out fine. But God being faithful through everything. That’s enough. That has to be enough, because anything less wouldn’t be real hope. It would just be wishful thinking.

    Easter is fifty days long in the church calendar. We don’t pack it up and leave. We keep asking what it means that Christ rose. We keep letting it change how we live. Because if death doesn’t have the last word, then how we live right now actually matters.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 102)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 102)

    We had some kids come forward to commit their lives to Christ, and one of them was our UPS delivery guy. DJ Light. You know him. Probably didn’t know he was wrestling with that until he was ready.

    And I looked at these young people and I thought about what we’re doing here. This church has made a difference in the lives of a lot of young people over the years. A lot. And that matters. It matters right now and it’s going to matter for the rest of their lives.

    When kids are growing up, they’re looking for something real. They’re not looking for adults to be perfect. They’re looking for us to be honest. To actually mean what we say. To show up when it’s inconvenient. To keep showing up.

    These three young people made a choice. They said yes to Jesus. Not because they’re perfect, not because they’ve got it all figured out, but because they saw something here worth saying yes to. And that’s the miracle. Not that they’re suddenly fixed. But that they’re willing to give their lives to something bigger than themselves.

    If you know these kids, love them. Pray for them. That’s not just nice sentiment. That’s them needing to feel that they’re part of something. Because they are. They’re part of the body of Christ, and they’re going to need us to remind them of that when things get hard.

    This is why the church exists. Not to run programs. Not to fill seats. But to help young people see that there’s a God who loves them, and that their lives can mean something. That it’s worth the risk to say yes.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    I want to talk about my grandmother. She had a condition called tic douloureux—it’s a nerve condition in your face that causes excruciating pain. Not the kind that kills you, just the kind that feels like it’s killing you. She lived with that for thirty years, from her early sixties all the way to ninety.

    And I watched her have these attacks. Just wracked with pain, her face going through it. Finally found a doctor, found some medicine that helped. But one time when I was down at her house, she said something that broke my heart. She wondered what she’d done that God was punishing her for.

    And I said, “No. You know better than that.” Because that’s what we’d been taught. That’s what the world taught us back then. If something’s wrong with you, you did something to deserve it. If you’re sick, it’s your fault.

    Psalm 38 is raw. It’s a person detailing every way they’re falling apart. Arrows have pierced me. Nothing in my body isn’t broken. My wounds reek. It’s graphic. It’s real pain. And woven all through it is this terrible awareness that people think it’s his own fault.

    Those who were near me now stay far away. Those who want me dead lay traps. People muttering lies all day long. So here’s a person who’s devastated physically, and then everyone’s gathering like buzzards, looking for an opening, convinced he brought this on himself.

    We do that, don’t we. When somebody’s down—sick, in crisis, struggling—something in us wants to figure out what they did to get there. Not so we can help. So we can make sure we don’t do it. So we can be safer. And people back away. They stop visiting. They assume the person can’t respond anyway, so why bother. And isolation piles on top of misery.

    But the psalm ends different. Waiting for God. Come quickly and help me. It’s not pretty resolution. It’s just—I’m still here. I’m still reaching. And I’m still waiting for God to show up.

    That’s the thing we miss sometimes. When somebody’s in it, they don’t need our judgment. They need our presence. They need to know that even when they can’t respond, they’re not abandoned. That’s where God is in the middle of this—not as the one punishing, but as the one refusing to leave.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalms 6)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalms 6)

    You know that old country song? “I’ve got tears in my ears from lying on my bed crying over you.” That’s what Psalm 6 is. A person wringing out the couch every night, sick and desperate, calling out to God.

    This is one of the penitential psalms—those raw prayers where people are falling apart. The psalmist starts: please Lord, don’t punish me when you’re angry. Don’t discipline me when you’re furious. And all I thought was, yeah, that’s actually good parenting advice. Don’t punish when you’re mad. Because then it’s your anger coming out, not real discipline. It’s just harm. And this person, whoever wrote Psalm 6, they’re already suffering. They don’t need wrath on top of it.

    The thing that struck me is how thoroughly they’re falling apart. Have mercy on me because I’m frail. My bones are shaking. My whole body is completely terrified. We like to think we’re strong, don’t we? We think we’re invincible. But the truth is we’re all frail. Sometimes it just takes getting sick to realize it.

    And here’s what got me—the psalmist is sick, and not only that, but other people are piling on. There’s this blame floating around: if you’re sick, it’s your fault. You sinned, you didn’t pray hard enough, you didn’t believe strongly enough. We knew this back then. Even today you get drifts of it, that spiritual blame. And when you’re already down, people coming at you with that—it just does more damage.

    But then the psalmist says something that stopped me. “But you, Lord.” Just like that. Not “but I hope” or “but I think maybe.” It’s a statement of confidence in the middle of everything falling apart. But you, Lord. How long will this last? Come back to me. Deliver me for the sake of your faithful love. Not because I’ve earned it—the psalmist knows better than that. But because you are faithful. Because you love me.

    That’s the whole thing, isn’t it. When we’re completely undone, that’s when we need to remember God’s steadfast, stubborn love. Not our strength. Not our righteousness. Just God showing up.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 111)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 111)

    I’m thinking about how we use busyness to avoid actually living. You know—staying so occupied with church stuff and family stuff and work stuff that we never actually have to look at anything hard inside ourselves.

    One of the things that’s becoming clearer to me is how many of us learned, way back in childhood, to deal with pain by just… not dealing with it. By moving on. By finding something else to do. And we spiritualize it. “God wants us to be joyful.” “Don’t let sadness control you.” And before you know it, you’re sixty years old and you’ve never actually grieved anything.

    The spiritual work—the real work—is going the other direction. Letting yourself feel what you actually feel. Sitting with anger. Sitting with grief. Sitting with confusion about God. Not because that’s the goal. But because you have to know what’s in there before you can let God heal it.

    I see people do this in churches sometimes, and the reaction is immediate: “Well, that’s worldly psychology.” No. That’s Jesus. Jesus sat with his grief. Jesus felt his anger. Jesus didn’t skip over the hard feelings to get to the resurrection message.

    If you’ve been taught your whole life that emotions are dangerous, that feelings mean you don’t trust God, that a good Christian is a happy one—that’s a lie worth examining. That’s a script worth questioning. Because wholeness isn’t about feeling better. It’s about being honest. It’s about bringing your whole self to God instead of just the acceptable parts.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • Wholeness and Healing

    Wholeness and Healing

    There’s this pool with five porches, and legend had it that an angel would stir the water and whoever got in first got healed. Which is kind of ridiculous, right? But if you’ve ever been desperate for healing, you’d sit by that pool for 38 years too.

    Jesus sees this one man and asks him: do you want to be made well? The man doesn’t answer yes or no. He just explains why he hasn’t gotten healed yet—he’s alone, nobody to help him, everybody gets in front of him in line. That’s not what Jesus asked.

    But Jesus doesn’t correct him. Jesus just says: get up. Pick up your mat. Walk.

    And the man does. All those years of being helpless are gone.

    Then the Sabbath police notice he’s carrying his mat on the Sabbath, which was against the law. And they give him a hard time about it. The man just says what happened—the guy who healed me told me to do this. So I did.

    Here’s the thing: Jesus could have waited. Jesus had all kinds of power over water. He could have stirred up that pool. He could have thrown the man in and let him experience healing the way he expected to experience it. But he didn’t. He met that particular man where he was and gave him what he needed: not a miracle of the water, but a command to stand up and walk. That required something from the man too. It required him to try.

    We keep looking for one healing template that works for everybody. But Jesus didn’t work that way. Each person was individual. Each person had their own life, their own history, their own future. And Jesus knew that. He was aware of it. And he loved each person as they actually were.

    Sometimes he touched people. Sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he was gentle. Sometimes he was direct. But he always met people where they were.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    There was a widow—that’s the only detail we need to know. She was a widow and her only son was dead. And she was carrying his body out of the city for burial.

    Jesus saw her and something moved in him. The Gospel says he had compassion. But compassion doesn’t quite cover it. It’s a gut-level, bone-deep recognition of someone’s suffering. Jesus knows the depth of her loss in a way nobody else can. He stops the funeral procession. He touches the stretcher. He tells the young man: get up.

    And the dead man sits up. He speaks. Jesus gives him back to his mother.

    Now, Jesus didn’t do that for everybody. He didn’t resuscitate everyone who’d died. We still live in a world where people die. Where grief is real. Where loss isn’t magically fixed by faith or prayer or anything else.

    But this story isn’t primarily about the miracle. It’s about Jesus seeing one specific person in one specific moment and meeting her there. Not waiting for her to come to him. Not asking what she’d done to deserve this suffering. Not explaining anything. Just stopping. Looking. Acting.

    We do such damage trying to explain suffering. We tell people it was God’s will. We suggest they must have done something to cause it. We come up with all kinds of theories, like Job’s friends, and we’re usually just wrong. What we know is that Jesus met this woman in her pain. And we can do that for people too. Not fix it. Not explain it. Just stop. See them. Be there.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Power of Love (Matthew 9)

    The Power of Love (Matthew 9)

    Jesus looked at the crowds and had compassion for them because they were troubled and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. That’s Matthew 9, and yeah, it’s beautiful. But here’s the thing about compassion—it can get out of hand.

    When Jesus saw the damage, the lostness, the mess of people’s lives, he felt this overwhelming need to gather them all up. I mean, he wanted to hug everybody to him. He saw people who were physically sick, emotionally distressed, grieving, in anguish. And he felt it. But here’s what struck me: in the confines of his physical body, he couldn’t be everywhere at once. He knew that when his time on earth was done, there would need to be other people—flesh and blood people—who could do what he’d been doing. Who could love people the way he’d been loving them.

    So he told his disciples: the fields are ripe. There’s so much need. But the workers are few. And you know what? Choosing to do what Jesus did, choosing to leave that kind of life, choosing to have that kind of compassion—it goes against our nature. Our nature is to take care of me and mine. To be closed in. To not want to worry about all those people.

    This gets worse for the tender-hearted. They don’t just feel compassion—they feel the pain. They want to adopt everybody. Bring them home. And sometimes that overwhelms them right out of the game. Nope. I’m not going to be part of that. It’s too dangerous. It’s too messy. Too smelly. Too dirty.

    But here’s what Jesus teaches too: be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Compassion without wisdom isn’t always helping. You have to ask yourself: is what I’m doing actually going to help, or am I making things worse? Is my compassion based on my own health staying intact? On my home? On my money? Jesus knew that sometimes the obvious problem isn’t what someone actually needs. He’d ask people: do you want to be healed? He’d ask instead of assuming.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Matthew 6)

    The Heart of Prayer (Matthew 6)

    I’ve been thinking about the young people we’ve known through Project Transformation, and what it means to see someone really come alive when they realize they can do something. When they realize they have a gift. Not that they were born with it perfect, but that it can be developed. That they can grow.

    That’s what mentorship is. It’s not telling somebody you’re special. It’s showing them the door and saying, go. Try. Fail. Try again. And I’ll be here.

    What these young people learned wasn’t just about ministry or church. It was about themselves. That they have something to offer. That their voice matters. That God can actually use them. And you know what? Once you know that about yourself, you can’t unknow it. It changes everything. The question becomes, what will I do with this? Where will I go? Who will I become? That’s when following Jesus stops being something your church wants and becomes something you want.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    My granddaddy always said, keep your own counsel. Don’t tell your business all over the place. And I lived by that for years without even realizing I had. See, that’s how it works. Nobody has to say it out loud. We just absorb it from the air around us. We pick it up from what people do. From what gets punished. From what gets praised.

    I didn’t know until I was older that I had written this script for myself: don’t ever be wrong. Don’t ever say something incorrect. Because when you say something wrong, people shame you. They correct you. They look at you like you’re stupid. So I decided to just not talk.

    We all have these scripts. Your mama always told you something. Your granddaddy said something. And maybe it was good advice. Maybe it was broken advice. But it’s running in your head now, telling you who you are and how you should be. The thing is, Jesus looks at all of that and says, who is my mother? Who are my brothers? He’s saying that living God’s way matters more than living by the rules we inherited. More than staying silent. More than being perfect. Your story starts here. In God. In what God wants for you. Not in what your family decided.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope