As a child a band-aid can usually suffice for the scrapes and cuts collected from adventures. However, the process of healing is not always as simple as waiting for scabs to grow over wounds.
Because the process of healing can be long, difficult and challenging, Family Church held a UCC Prayer and Remembrance service at their Sutherlin campus on Sept. 30, Friday, to honor the victims and families of Oct. 1 and assist the community.
“ I feel like the message of hope is that the first year is behind us, and now we can begin to see if it’s made a real positive change in how we relate to each other, how we have our values and what we treasure. To take the lessons that we’ve learned, and the relationships we’ve built and the compassion that we have and move forward,” Pastor Paul Glazner said on Friday.
The sermon included worshiping in the form of music and prayer, focusing on scripture from 2 Corinthians 1 in the Bible including the words, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. . . .”
Aside from the service conducted Friday night, Family Church offers a Grief Care Ministry open to anyone seeking healing from different circumstances of loss. Information regarding Family Church’s ministries can be found at FamilyChurchweb website.
According to authors and psychiatrists Beate Schrank, Mark Hayward, Giovanni Stanghellini and Larry Davidson, hope is essential in recovery, resilience and human adaptation.
One of the UCC Prayer and Remembrance service’s goals was to increase the community’s feelings of hope. “I think the real key thing is that painful things either make you bitter or they make you better. They either deepen you and give you compassion or they make you hard and cynical,” said Pastor Glazner.