As I sat down to write this, I noticed one of my bookmarks had dropped on the floor. I reached down to pick it up and read a quote from Paul Claudel, a 20th century French poet and dramatist: “Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with his presence.” That speaks to me of how God touches us in the midst of the miseries of our life. No matter how awful the situation may seem at the time, God is present, there with us, upholding us, encouraging us, strengthening us to face the particular circumstances that life presents. Our psalmist knew what it felt like to recognize the touch of God’s hand in his life as he sings: “You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.”

The touch of God’s hand doesn’t always appear as we might desire or expect. Just look at the Naaman story in our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures. Oftentimes the Holy One uses others to bring God’s grace-filled Presence to us in our pain—the prophet Elisha for Naaman, the medical profession when we are ill, friends when we are lonely or upset, for example—but it is the steadfast love of God that we experience no matter how it may come.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus touched the leper, something taboo in those days, spoke healing words, and the leper “was made clean.” Similarly, last week’s gospel records Jesus taking Simon Peter’s mother-in-law’s hand (touching a woman outside your family was also taboo), lifting her up, and “the fever left her.” Thank goodness God doesn’t let what culture considers beyond the pale limit God’s grace.

It’s exciting, of course, when the result is instantaneous as it was for those Biblical examples above, but the good news is that God is in it for the long haul, as well, to keep us going one day at a time. May we recognize the touch of God in our lives today and every day and respond with the psalmist’s joy: “Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing; O Lord, my God, I will give you thanks for ever.”