NeuroDivine

Psalm 40 | Isaiah 38:1-5,21-22 | Matthew 16:13-28

This afternoon, as I sit through three and a half hours of dialysis, I find myself living inside the words of Psalm 40, Isaiah 38, and Matthew 16. The psalmist’s waiting is my waiting: tethered to the machine, I wait, and yet I trust that God bends low to hear me. The hum of the dialysis becomes the rhythm of prayer, and in that waiting I sense the ground beneath me is steadied. Even here, a new song rises—not loud or triumphant, but the quiet resilience of breath and endurance.

Hezekiah’s story in Isaiah reminds me that illness is not a mark of abandonment. His healing comes through figs pressed to the wound, earthy and practical. My healing, too, comes through tubes and filters, through the ordinary grace of medicine. As an autistic gay Anglican, I know that healing is not about erasing difference but about God’s presence in the body I have, the life I live. Dialysis is my fig poultice: not glamorous, not instant, but holy in its own way.

And then Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter blurts out the truth, then falters when the cross is named. I know that tension well—confessing Christ with conviction, yet shrinking from the cost. But Jesus’ question is personal: he asks me, in my own voice, with my own identity, autistic and gay, Anglican and beloved. My answer matters. My discipleship is not despite who I am but through it. To take up the cross is not to seek suffering but to walk the path of love, even when it is heavy.

Together, these passages weave into the fabric of my afternoon: waiting as prayer, healing as embodied grace, confession as identity. Dialysis becomes liturgy, a slow offering of endurance and hope. In this space, I answer Christ’s question not only with words but with the witness of staying, trusting, and living faithfully in the body I have been given.

A Hymn.

I waited long; the Lord bent low,
And heard my patient cry;
He set my feet on solid ground,
And raised my song on high.

Like figs upon the wounded flesh,
God’s mercy comes to me;
Through tubes and time, through healing hands,
His grace my poultice be.

“Who do you say that I am now?”
Christ asks me face to face;
I answer with my life and breath,
Sustained by love and grace.

The cross I bear is not in vain,
But marks the path of care;
In waiting, healing, naming truth,
I find Christ present there.