Stay With Me

Gospel Reflection for July 3, 2022

Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment. Do not move about from one house to another.

Luke 10:7

Ever since I have become a Christian, I have found it hard to stay in one place. Some years back, before God brought me into the church, he allowed the removal of a very important person in my life. This tearing away was painful, but necessary in order for me to continue my journey of truth and enter the Kingdom of God. The Lord already knew that it would have been impossible for me to choose between her and himself.

Since that falling out, I was scared to connect with people in the church, especially because I was Jewish. I also found myself constantly wanting to move around, whether it be a house or church or the kids’ school. I just could never seem to be comfortable in any place, and wherever I went, the pain of rejection followed me.

It ends up that I followed this pain all the way to getting help. I discovered that this rejection wound was tied to my wounds from sexual abuse. Thanks be to God I was led to a Christian ministry for sexual abuse survivors where I encountered my second miraculous healing with our Lord. It was here that I learned that wanting for constant movement was tied to the pain of my sexual abuse trauma.

In group, I learned that we follow ourselves wherever we go. We could move across the world, change our hair, get a tattoo or get a new group of friends, but this would never help us deal with the pain of our past.

In today’s gospel, as Jesus sends out the seventy-two, he tells them that if a peaceful person lives in the house that they enter, to let their peace rest on them and stay in that house, not moving about from “one house to another.” Jesus’ words are a reminder that when we enter a safe space, a place where we are accepted and we do not lose our peace, then we are to stay there. This is important for so many people to hear today.

People who have been abused, rejected, or traumatized in any way often also run away from the very people who are listening to them and welcoming them. Today, Jesus is saying, stay. Stay in the safe spaces I send you. I am with you. Eat and drink what is offered to you there- love, joy, and peace.