@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

The Ultimate Healing

If God is good, what does health look like? If health is a state of perfection, then healing is the journey towards that state. To be perfected is to be made completely whole and healthy. God has promised that we will be made perfect, but that this complete perfection must await the resurrection, at which point our present corrupted bodies will be made incorruptible. Does this mean that there can be no health prior to the resurrection? No, but it does mean that any healing will necessarily be limited to what is possible given our physical corruption. If we use expressions such as ‘made perfectly whole’, as Scripture itself does, we must remember that this cannot be strictly true prior to the resurrection, and that it is only a valid descriptor to the extent that health is seen as the best that can be achieved in a corrupted frame. That said, let us always pray in faith for healing, for God still heals today!