Sometimes Even a Shadow Will Do

In so many ways, we already know that it doesn't take very much.  But the fact still surprises.  Last night, throwing together a spur-of-the-moment, ad lib pizza for dinner, I grabbed some vegetables from the freezer left over from last summer's crop to roast as toppings.  The freezer bag with sliced jalapenos was almost empty, so I tossed those remaining onto the roasting pan along with the bell peppers and onions and that would join the fresh potato slices and cabbage.  Shortly thereafter, the pizza assembled and nicely browned, I sat down to enjoy the nourishment.  And it was good -- very good, if I do say so myself -- until that one perilous bite that included too many of those roasted jalapenos.  The air went out of the room.  In my mouth it was the 4th of July all over again, with sparklers, Roman candles, firecrackers and rocket bursts all firing simultaneously.  I coughed and gasped and tried to catch my breath -- a fete not accomplished for several minutes.

It doesn't take much.

And not just on the culinary side.  Stumbling across a passage this morning from the book of Acts, the narrator observes the successes of the early Apostles, noting that people "even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats in order that Peter's shadow might fall on them as he came by" (5:15).

It doesn't take much; even a shadow will suffice -- and heal.

I know that, of course -- from personal experience.  OK, not perhaps with an actual shadow, but with a smile that changed everything in an otherwise hostile or desultory room; a single word; simple eye contact and the notice it blessedly, almost miraculously conveyed that "you exist."  A postcard.  A phone call. A touch.

It doesn't take much, sometimes, to heal.  Sometimes the merest shadow will do.