Katrina and Absolution

Katrina has a few more “gifts” to deliver over the coming months. A few strong, sharp, blasts of wind and the oaks will drop what her tail failed to swipe completely. Perhaps they will miss my azaleas completely. If not, then I will prune some more, and they will bloom some more.

We live on the western edge of where she passed by. Our county suffered some damage, mostly scattered. Mostly it was inconvenient, like being in a green blizzard. In pastor’s neighborhood some trees fell on houses. Not in mine. A large pine did fall in Katrina’s final slashings, a 60 footer. It lay across three yards behind us, none of which was ours.

Glen chides/teases me about being a “lucifer” because of my Katrina clean up capers with a brush fire. Incendiary devices have been banned from my hands until further notice (county burn ban notwithstanding). All but my forearm is quite healed and evidence of my folly is non-existent- an epidermal absolution. One of the reasons John took me away from here so quickly after Katrina (we went to Little Rock) was the local hospitals were still on emergency electricity or had none at all. Had I needed more care he didn’t want another nine hours in the ER.

Physical healing relates to Absolution in that Christ’s resurrection is for the Baptized the Greater Reality than what is known in this world. We may not always experience physical healing in this life, but a certainty for the Baptized in Christ is their resurrection in Christ which has already occurred (Ro. 6:3-4), but is not yet fully experienced. The Absolution is the Gospel spoken and received; the Gospel is the restoration to that which was created in, through, and for Christ. Of the Absolution the Apology states,

“If the heart doubts, it maintains that Gods promises are uncertain and inane. So it is written in 1 John 5:10 , He who does not believe God has made him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne to his Son.” Ap XII (V) 62.