advocate

I have a friend who was dropped when she was young.  She hit the cold, hard floor of a lifestyle closed off to natural questions about it.  The damage she has lived with is invisible to the naked eye.  She is crippled in her emotions, and her heart has grown in a sort of contorted, deformed way.  She says she does not think she will ever be repaired, because she has been this way most of her life.

There was a man physically crippled from birth who lay by the healing pool for thirty-plus years.  With hundreds of other people who were sick, diseased, or injured laying all around, the man lay there alone, with no one to help him.  A very famous and mysterious new Teacher happened upon the man and asked him if he wanted to be healed.  It was a simple question that begged a one-word answer.  The answer the crippled man gave revealed the disability of fallen humanity-a lack of faith.  More than that, it revealed a lack of knowledge about Who was asking the question, and a lack of relationship with anyone who cared about him at all.

So it is with most people who live, we all carry within us a disability of the heart.  When we encounter the Teacher, we are posed with an opportunity.  Many of us make assumptions about what the Teacher offers.  And we are surprised at the plainness of the offer, finding that real healing requires something of us.  It requires an innocent, unassuming initiative known spiritually as "faith."  When the Teacher approaches and asks us if we want to be healed, our tendency is to give a myriad of excuses why we have remained in the state of disability we're in.

"Do you want to be healed?" the Teacher asks.  That is quite a question, almost rude.  The implication is 'do you want to be changed, to have your life up-ended?'  If it were possible to be healed, we would have to live differently, to act differently.  Things would be required of us that were not before.  We would become responsible for ourselves, our livelihoods, our families, and those around us in a greater way.  We would have the knowledge, ability, and experience to get up off our mats and become the person we said we did not have, to help others laying around waiting for the waters to be stirred.  Well, do you want to be healed?

The crippled man could not give a definitive "yes!" to the question.  Perhaps, the realization of what could be came to him when the Teacher told him what his healing would require, "Take up your mat and walk."  Were I the man, my natural reaction would have been, "Who are you to be so rude and bold enough to say that to me??!!"  Now, that is the crux of the matter.  It would have been a rude and down-right cruel thing to say if it were anyone else.  But it was the Teacher, the Master, the Creator, the Word telling him "NIKE!!"  "Just do it!!"  Do the thing that has crippled your life.  How simple.  How profound.  If we are to begin to be healed, we have to start with the thing that has stone-cold stopped us from living.  We have to stop laying around waiting for something to happen.  We have to stop waiting for that perfect relationship to get us engaged in that stirring, abundant life.  We have to simply believe the words of the Teacher, and start standing up!  What happens after that is up to Him.  What your healing looks like, instantaneous or processional, is completely up to Him.  How could you possibly know what the Creator has in mind?  Trust Him and obey, see what happens.

There is no record of the Teacher, Jesus Christ, engaging anyone else at the healing pool; only this one man, crippled from birth.  What an incredible act of love, that Jesus saw this man among hundreds of others.  But Jesus did not see a man He could heal to simply "Wow!" the people.  Jesus did not see a man who would simply become part of  "productive society" working a job, etc.  Perhaps the hugeness of what Jesus was doing in his life did not occur to him until after the man took his first steps.  When he stood up, he did become an object that other people oo-ed and ah-ed.  And he became a man who could now be a productive citizen.  But more profoundly, when he stood up, he instantly became an advocate for the hundreds of other broken people laying around him.  He knew their feelings, their frustration, their depression, their anger, and everything concerning their plight.  And now, for the first time in his life, he could do something about it.  His healing changed his situation, his perspective, and his responsiblity.  Jesus wasn't there to merely heal a body, that's nothing to Him.  He was there to heal a person. 

What would you do?  "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred."
Because of Jesus' love and mercy, we can become one who helps others to know Him, too, and be healed.  We can become healers and teachers to those crippled by ignorance, faithlessness, abuse, friendlessness, depression, hopelessness.  We only have to answer, "YES!!"  And then we have to stand up, roll up all our excuses and old ways of thinking that we have layed on for so long, and we have to take the first step.


To my friend who feels so imprisoned by her feelings, twisted experiences, and broken heart, I say to you in Jesus' name, "Get up!  Take up your mat and walk!"