Be healed

I have this scripture that I just can’t get out of my mind. It is Mark 1:40 - 42 out of the NLT.

“A man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. “If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean,” he said. Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” Instantly the leprosy disappeared, and the man was healed.

What particularly struck my attention was the little star by the word compassion, stating that some texts state “moved with anger”.

I sat there dumbfounded over why this situation would move Christ to anger. After all if He is angry, I knew it must be some type of righteous anger. I closed my eyes and hashed this out: compassion, anger, compassion, anger. Whenever I thought of the word compassion, I couldn’t help but have the visual in my mind of the child we sponsor through Compassion International. So with that image in my head, I immediately thought of how angry it makes me at times that we have children in this world that don’t have food and water. Hmmmmm, compassion could lead to anger then. So maybe it is that, Christ so hurt for this poor man plagued by leprosy that He was not only filled with compassion but an anger that His child was hurting. Not just some child, but His child, the child He loves.

Then as I was driving home tonight listening to Sheila Walsh’s “Amazing things happen when a woman trusts God” on CD, I listened to her tell the story of Jesus weeping at the grave of Lazarus. She applied a similar thought to these verses, in that Jesus was hurting for the pain of those He loved.

Wow. I truly have a new respect for what Christ does in the healing process. I have always thought that the hardest part of healing is the waiting. It seems as if it takes forever at times, that God is simply ignoring your requests. It can seem as if we are in so much pain that if we have to bear another minute we will not survive, but somehow we hang in there. I always sat there wondering if God is just sitting back in His big heavenly beach chair hanging out while I am crushing under the weight of pain, after all if He heard me, surely He would act.

However, these passages gave me new assurance that He not only hears my cries, but is pained and perhaps even weeping and angry over the pain. He does not ignore one little bit of our hurt, but stands right there in the midst of it with us, collecting each and every tear we shed. And when the time comes, we know He is willing, and we will be healed. Maybe not in the way we expected or imagined, but we will be healed.