Memorial Service for a Healing Prayer Minister

This June we commissioned Healing Prayer Ministers for the Healing Prayer Missio Community, whose missio is to pray for people to become healed and whole.

One of the women we commissioned was a woman named CeCe! She was an African American faith filled person who had been battling cancer for about 14 years. Her main ministry was at the hospital when she received chemo, she would be praying for and encouraging the others in the treatment room. She spread light wherever she was.

While I was in London, Cece's body gave out. Her spirit was still strong and her zest for life never dulled. But, when she realized that her body had given all it had, she gathered her huge family and many friends around her and said goodbye. She died within 24 hours.

It was fun to be at her memorial service. The stories of how she reached out to others; picking them up, cooking for them, making the church a hospitable place....she was doing all that while she battled cancer. I don't think that she died with any regrets, because she lived each day to the fullest. Her church did a great job, too, of recognizing the sadness of missing her but celebrating that her life continued in an even better way, in heaven!

I loved being present at her memorial service because we have made many new friends from CeCe's circle, several of them being commissioned as Healing Prayer Ministers. We dearly love one another. This is one of the advantages of thinking about Missio Lux as a river, rather than as a lake.

A lake (like a traditional church) has specific boundaries. You can tell where it starts and stops. You know where to find it. But a river is different. A river is constantly moving. It looks different at one point than it does another. It twists and bends and ebbs and flows. It has many tributaries feeding into it.

One of the tributaries is the different people who are part of Missio Lux Healing Prayer Ministry. They come from different faith expressions in following Jesus, different ethnicities, different economic statuses and different ages. It keeps things fun and full of movement.

Our time with CeCe was short, but the mark she left on us will last for a long time.