This is a gentle space. No pressure, no performance. You don't have to have it together to be here. You don't have to be healed, or feeling anything in particular today. You're welcome exactly as you are, wherever you are reading this. If you need to move, or step away and come back later — that's completely fine. There's no right way to be here. Just be here. HYMN We begin with a hymn verse. Read it slowly. You might want to sit with each line before moving on. Breathe on me, Breath of God, Fill me with life anew, That I may love what thou dost love, And do what thou wouldst do. — Edwin Hatch PRAYER Loving God, Thank you that you do not wait for us to be well before you notice us. Thank you that in the middle of our years — in the middle of our waiting, our weariness, our half-lived lives — you are not absent. Revive us today, not in some distant future, but here, in the midst of things. And if we find ourselves healed and walking forward, may we be the kind of people who turn back. Amen. OLD TESTAMENT ANCHOR "Lord, I have heard your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Renew them in our day, make them known in our time; in wrath remember mercy." — Habakkuk The prophet Habakkuk is not praying from a place of triumph. He is praying from the middle. He has heard what God has done in the past — the great deeds, the ancient mercies — and he is asking that those same deeds might happen again, now, in his own time. Not in some golden age. Not when things are better. Now. In the midst of the years. Revive us, O Lord, in the midst of the years. It is one of the most honest prayers in scripture. It does not pretend things are fine. It does not wait until they are. It simply asks: would you do it again? Here? For us? SCRIPTURE Our reading today is from Luke chapter seventeen, verses eleven to nineteen, from the Easy English Bible. As Jesus was going to Jerusalem, he walked along the border between Samaria and Galilee. He was going into a village when ten men met him who had a skin disease. They were standing far away from him. They called out to him, "Jesus! Master! Please help us!" When Jesus saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." As they went, they were healed and made clean. When one of them saw that he was healed, he came back. He praised God with a loud voice. He bowed down at Jesus' feet with his face on the ground. He thanked Jesus. This man was from Samaria. Jesus asked, "Were not ten healed? Where are the other nine? Has no one come back to praise God except this man from another country?" Then Jesus said to him, "Stand up and go. Your faith has made you well." DEVOTION They were standing far away. That is where the story begins. Not in a crowd, not in a conversation — at a distance. Because they had to be. The law said so. They were unclean, and the world had arranged itself accordingly: over there, not here. Close enough to be seen, far enough not to touch. But they had heard about Jesus. And so they called out — a single, desperate cry across the gap: Jesus! Master! Please help us! It is not an elaborate prayer. There is no theology in it, no doctrinal precision. Just a name, a title, and a please. Just ten human beings, standing at a distance from everything they wanted to belong to, asking to be brought back in. And Jesus does something surprising. He doesn't touch them, doesn't pronounce them healed, doesn't make a spectacle. He simply says...