Jesus always sees beyond the presenting problem to the core. He doesn’t just want to touch the surface, but the deeper places. Touching those deep places within us is the only way we can experience real healing and wholeness.
Thus, Jesus knew that the
problem with the paralytic (Mark 2:1-12) wasn’t merely his legs, it was so much more than
that. The real problem was his heart, so
healing just his legs would stop far short of the healing that was most
desperately needed. If Jesus healed the paralyzed man's legs, without healing his heart, the man would still not be whole.
Maybe you have prayed for years for God’s intervention in some area of your life, and yet, for the most part, those prayers have seemingly gone unanswered. That area of your life remains unchanged. Here’s a thought: maybe it’s because you are praying for the wrong thing. Maybe you too, are praying for your legs, when there is a much deeper issue that must be addressed. God wants to get his hands on that place. He wants to heal you at your deepest levels, but in order to do that he needs you to recognize exactly what the problem is. Are you willing to go there with him?
Heal us, O God, in a deep and beautiful way. For it is healing that we need and only you can offer it. Heal our hearts, heal our lives, and heal our world. Our wounds are the source of most of our conflicts and issues and dysfunctions, so touch us with your healing hands of love and make us alive and whole and free. Amen.
“As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.”
They were fishermen, but they will be fishers of men. God was calling them to leave behind what they were, in order to become who they really are. It was a pretty abrupt departure from the life they had known and grown comfortable with. Now they were being asked to move from proficiency to mystery. They would have to leave behind a life and an identity they had grown accustomed to and familiar with, in order to step out into the great unknown.
But isn’t that always what
life with Jesus is like? Leaving behind
the comfortable and familiar, in order to embrace a life of risky dependence. Trading autonomy for obedience and control
for surrender. Saying goodbye to comfort
and proficiency, since they cause us to stop short of the life God is beckoning
toward, and saying an unreserved yes to Jesus, regardless of what that
might mean.
We might be tempted to try
to convince ourselves that this calling was only for them, but it’s not. It is for us as well. These brave souls were willing to leave everything
behind—their boats, their nets, and even their own father—in order to follow the
call of Jesus. Are we?
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.” (Mt. 5:8)
Of all the beatitudes, this one seems the
most inaccessible. I mean, I know my own
heart and how impure it really is. Thus,
purity of heart is only possible if God provides it; we can’t do it
ourselves. We are totally dependent on
him.
A careful study of the word,
however, might give us a hint as to how this takes place. It’s what the saints called purgation. The word pure, in the Greek, is katharos,
which is an adjective meaning clean.
It is the word also used in John 15:3 to describe the results of pruning
(kathairō), the verb associated with katharos. Kathairō literally means to purge. It is the process by which we are emptied, in
order to be filled. Thus, if we ever
want to be filled with God’s purity, we must first allow the Spirit of God to
purge us of our impurities. In the words
of a wise saint, “How can God possibly fill you if you are already full of
yourself? It’s like trying to pour into
an already full cup. You must first
empty the cup.”
So, instead of just trying
to add purity to our hearts and lives, which is impossible for us to achieve on
our own anyway, we should probably start (through the power of the Spirit) by emptying
ourselves of all that is not God. Then,
and only then, can he fill us with himself, and his purity. Then we will, indeed, be blessed.
In the words of Susan Annette Muto, “When we live the Beatitudes in and
with the Lord, we become liberated persons in the fullest sense. We follow the path of purgation until, with
Jesus, we are filled with the peace of surrender to the Father and led by his
Spirit to new depths of intimacy with the Indwelling Trinity.”
Prayer
Closing Prayer: Purge me, Lord Jesus, of all that is not you, so that you can fill me with your life, your love, and your purity.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Mt. 5:7)
So, if the merciful are blessed, how in the world do we become merciful? It seems to me that it’s impossible to be merciful without first realizing how desperately we need mercy ourselves. If we don’t think we need mercy, we probably aren’t going to be able to extend mercy. But if we realize the depths of our own need, and are extended mercy ourselves, it makes it much more likely we will respond in kind. I mean, how could one who has been granted mercy, withhold that mercy from others, right? Receiving mercy changes us into merciful people. So the way to become merciful is to bask in the mercy of God.
But we can only do that, it seems, by coming face to face with our own neediness and desperation. As much as we would like for it not to, desperation plays a definite role in the equation. Desperation leads to dependence, dependence leads to humility, and humility, in turn, leads to mercy. Thus, increasing our desperation, increases our capacity to be merciful. Once we have received mercy ourselves, it does something deep inside—it makes us merciful people. And blessed.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Mt. 5:6)
What does it mean to hunger
and thirst for righteousness? The word
for righteousness, in the Greek, is dikaiosynē. It means the state of him who is as he
ought to be. Thus, to hunger and
thirst for righteousness means to yearn for and long for and work for all
things, people, and relationships to be as God intended them to be.
Those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness are agents of life and hope and change in this world. They are the ones who are called and
empowered to bring the hope and the healing and the wholeness of God into this
dark and broken world. They are the ones
who are constantly working to help roll back the effects of the fall, by giving
people a taste of the kingdom of God in the here and now. They are ones who are called to live and to love
as God intended.
