COURAGE...healed not for perfection, but for adoption!

            In Luke 5:17-36, Christ is brought a paralytic. Of course, the paralytic's friends are hoping for a physical healing, and we can suppose the paralytic himself is hoping for one as well. Just as each of us, once we begin to admit that we are broken and weak, begin (rightly so) to seek healing from the Divine Physician. Yet, we often get bent out of shape, frustrated, and even desperate when we find that we are NOT being healed...at least not the way we want to be healed. Looking at Christ's interaction with the paralytic, we find WHAT MATTERS TO CHRIST:

“…he said to the paralytic, ‘Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”

            

             The Gospel never explains how the paralytic reacted in this instance, but how would you react? How DO you react? We go to Him and ask for healing, and enumerate all of our wounds, pains, and sufferings. We fall on our knees, we cry tears, our friends intercede, and we expect to rise from the stretcher - and finally be somebody, do something - and all that Christ repeats to us is "COURAGE, YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN!"  Do we allow these words of love to penetrate? Do we allow them to embrace us and remind us that we are LOVED and HEALED - not for perfection - but for adoption? Is our joy in the will of Christ, removing all obstacles that keep us from intimate union with Him, or are they in our own will, removing all obstacles that keep us from being less that WE will?

            Christ knows, in fact, that we are weak in faith and need help to see and understand that the forgiveness of sins is not only possible, but enough to make us whole/holy/happy. So, to manifest His power Christ in His tender mercy says:

“But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…

rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”

            Whether we like it or not, there is no authentic healing, FREEDOM FROM FEAR and WORRY, until our souls are first healed of their sin.  Then, and only then, will we have the strength and the power to not only rise to our feet, but to carry that which use to imprison us (the stretcher). Keep in mind, that we CARRY with us our stretcher - our weakness, our limitation - but it no longer keeps us from walking with the Lord.  

             The actions of God in our lives are all a reflection of the one great mystery, that which caused the Scribes to scoff: He draws us to Himself by the forgiveness of our sins, delivering us from all evil.  He heals us of that deadly wound inflicted on our race from the beginning.  We are restored, made whole, and all the Goodness that surrounds us is a reflection of this truth. The secret, then, is to TRUST that

            Christ heals every moment of every day.