Healing of the leper (Luke 5:12-16)
It is not easy to explain.
The crippling isolation,
Beginning when the priest
Looked me over
My skin burning
With humiliation
As real as the spreading
War with death.
In the end
It is almost a relief to leave.
Sit out the shame
In private;
Not face the sorrow,
Battling with fear,
In the eyes of those I loved.
Shouting ‘unclean’
Was the least of it:
The real agony
Feeling that no-one –
God included –
Could ever accept me.
Crippled with pain more inside
Than outside:
Spirit lacerated more
Than nerve endings ever could be.
It was not just my skin
He healed that day
With touch as gentle
As his gaze.
It was my soul.
By Jeannie Kendall