When we read healing and conversion stories in the gospels, we anticipate the healing and the end of the story so much that we forget that the people healed were real people who suffered for years with their ailments. It’s not as if the blind men lost his sight the day before and received their sight the next day. The Bleeding woman suffered for 12 years. I would imagine the paralyzed man couldn’t walk for a long time. The tax collector didn’t start his job last week. And even though the Centurion’s daughter had just died, it would make sense that she had probably been sick for a while.
Learning to read the gospels, means learning to live in the tension presented in the stories. It helps you to identify the power of the miracle stories. You ever get something in your eye? What if you experienced that feeling for 5 years straight? You ever cut yourself and couldn’t stop the bleeding? What if that went on for the next 60 days. You ever work in a job that is so demoralizing that you wake everyday wanting to stay in bed and to never see that place again? Reliving those experiences may help us to get a glimpse of what the blind men felt, or the bleeding woman felt or what Matthew felt as he collected taxes. All, I presume, wanted healing and wanted a change. Do you want healing? Do you want change? In the space below, write to God what you need healed in your life. Write to him what you need for him to change in your life. Don’t hold back. The one who made the blind see and raised the dead to life wants to hear from you.
12 While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
13 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him.
14 Then Jesus ordered him, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”
15 Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.