He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds — Psalm 147:3
Some people think the miracle of "healing lepers" is ancient history — like turning water to wine and multiplying loaves and fishes.
But such people have never spoken with the brigade of LDS women who knit unique bandages to wrap the wounds of lepers and others in the world.
Many readers already know about the program, but it deserves to be brought to light. It's not every day an aging sister knitting away by lamplight is also saving lives.
We no longer say the word "leprosy," of course. It's now "Hansen's disease." And it is no longer seen as a curse hurled by God at those who displease him, as Father Damien found in Hawaii. Yet it is still the same debilitating, devilish illness of Biblical days, a suffering that cries out for the intervention of angels.
And according to LDS Humanitarian Services, bands of angels are responding.
The bandages that LDS sisters supply are as carefully woven as spider webs. They must be made with "No. 10, knit Cro-sheen, 100 percent cotton" and knitted with No. 2 or 3 needles. The same stitch must be used throughout so the the bandage will not only stretch, but bind, not only allow air to circulate, but not unravel. One woman at the Deseret Morning News recently spent 20 hours knitting one bandage three inches wide and four feet long.
Bandages arrive in Utah from all over the country, then go out to all the world.
"It is a labor of love," one sister says. "It is something to touch the untouchables."
When the wraps finally arrive in the field, health officials say the first thing the wounded do is put them to their noses. They love the scent of the hand cream, soap and even the perfume that the handiworkers leave on the bandages. And that may prove to be as healing as the wrap itself.
Even a world away, healing happens best when there's a human touch.
I think of the Bible stories where Jesus would touch someone and make him whole. Those were obvious miracles. But I also think of what rabbi Harold Kushner has said: "Sometimes God performs miracles Himself. And sometimes He performs miracles by helping ordinary people do extraordinary things."
Healing someone with a touch is miraculous. But is it any less miraculous for a doting grandmother in, say, Huntsville to knit a bandage, see it whisked around the world and carefully placed on a leper's sores? My guess is the ancients would be more amazed at that than at the healing gestures of Jesus.
Miracles are simply a point of view.
"Every moment of this strange and lovely life, from dawn to dusk, is a miracle," Beverly Nichols once wrote. "Somewhere, always, a rose is opening its petals to the dawn. Somewhere, always, a flower is fading in the dusk. . .all are gathered, sooner or later, into the solitary fragrance that is God. Faintly, elusively, that fragrance lingers over all of us."
So nice work, sisters. You are bringing a human touch to a world awash with inhumanity. And sometimes that requires almost superhuman dedication.
You not only offer bandages to help heal wounded bodies, but you ease their wounded hearts with fragrances from your lives.
And you do it all without dropping a stitch.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com