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| Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law. |
TO CHEW ON: "… that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: 'He Himself took our infirmities And bore our sicknesses.' " Matthew 8:17
Jesus is busy and popular. We see him, at the beginning of today's reading (having just come down from a mountain teaching session followed by a huge crowd), talking with and then healing a man with leprosy. He walks to Capernaum and on entering the city gets waylaid by a Gentile centurion. At Peter's house one of his hostesses is sick so Jesus heals her. Then in the evening Peter's property becomes an impromptu healing and deliverance clinic for the town.
Now I realize that the Matthew narrative makes it sound like these things happened one after the other in close succession. There may well have been more time between the incidents than it seems. But even if these events occurred over days to a week, Jesus had a full schedule, which He carried out with not a whiff of a bad attitude.
There is no eye-shift of impatience when the man with leprosy stops Him. Rather, " ' I am willing (to heal). Be cleansed.' "
There is not a watch-glance of schedule-keeping when the centurion stops him. Rather, there is close listening, honest admiration of the man's faith, a mini-lecture to take advantage of the teachable moment, and the promise of an answered prayer.
At Peter's house, after a full day, He heals before supper and then ministers healing and release from demonic bondage till long after dark.
No wonder Matthew recognizes Him as the fulfillment of Isaiah 53:4. It doesn't happen through His looking on but because of His intimate involvement with and service of humanity—of us.
I watch Jesus here and get convicted as I imagine what my reactions to the things He encountered would have been:
- I would have been irritated by all those interruptions.
- I would have been overwhelmed by all the needs.
- I would have been self-protective, insisting, for example, that we take a break after supper instead of getting back to work.
Later in the New Testament, we see the disciples living with the same bold, people- and ministry-centred focus that they had seen in Jesus. Where did they get this spirit? From being with Jesus (Acts 4:19)
Maybe if I, if all of us, hung around Jesus more, allowed His Spirit to take over ours, we too would be known for the assured yet compassionate, identifying-with-human-needs, poured-out life that characterized Him.
PRAYER: Dear Jesus, I am full of awe at the way You handled life and its demands. I need the ability to see beyond my list of urgencies to what's eternally important, and the courage to pour my life into those things. Amen.
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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
