Beyond healing
You are my help and my deliverer;
O Lord, do not delay! Psalm 70:5
Read Matthew 8:14—17
Any healing of any individual is worth celebrating. I don’t have to find an argument for health and fitness and a body ready to serve God and love my neighbour. It proves itself. But this healing by Jesus, any healing by Jesus, is a good deal more than that. I need to see it as fulfilment. That is what it is called. It fulfils the word of the prophet. So it is not a chance happening. It fits. It connects with the plan and purpose and action of God. It is a surfacing of a mysterious hidden work of God, a manifestation of his plan to renew all things, a sign on the way towards the day when not just one person, not just someone’s mother-in-law, but all things will become new. So it’s an outcome. An outcome of a promise. And it’s a promise itself, a promise of the kingdom.
Lord, when you stood in the place of suffering and rejection you took our infirmities and you bore our diseases. You did this for Peter’s mother-in-law. And for some time she walked around well. But when, then, she finally died, you bore the suffering and rejection that prepared her for your father’s kingdom. So I entrust myself and those I pray for into your hands for this life and for the kingdom to come.