Not long ago I had a pain in my left shoulder that got my attention every time I moved my left arm. It was excruciating; the kind of pain that makes it so you can’t sleep at night and it’s all you can think about during the day. With some assistance from a friend who is a doctor, the problem was diagnosed. I was given some medication (a steroid) and I must say that if steroids did for baseball players what it did for my left shoulder then I can understand why some say it helped them hit more home runs. Within days of starting the medication I felt like I could’ve hit a few home runs myself, with the same arm that only days earlier couldn’t be lifted over my head. But what amazed me most about the medicine was that it seemed to know exactly where to go. It was like, the minute I took it, it got in my body, sensed where the problem was, went straight to it and started to work its magic. I felt infinitely better almost immediately.
In the 7th chapter of Mark, Jesus comes upon a man who can neither hear, nor speak (a deaf mute as the Bible calls him). Then Jesus does something fascinating. He puts his fingers in the man’s ears and touches his tongue. “He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue”. I think this is fascinating because Jesus didn’t need to touch the man’s ears and tongue. He could’ve just as easily said the word and the man would’ve been healed. In fact, in Matthew chapter 8 that’s exactly what he did. He spoke a word from afar and a centurion’s servant was healed. So why did Jesus make a point, in this case, of reaching out to touch the man. Why not just proclaim the man healed and be on his way? I think it’s because Jesus was a master at knowing what was needed. Where another man needed to know that Jesus could heal from a distance, this particular man seemed to need his physical touch. Like medicine that seems to discern precisely what is needed and then goes directly to the heart of the problem, Jesus seems to be able to discern precisely what was needed in each and every situation. Our God is one whose medicine is so very personal and particular to our hurts and our needs. To one it’s the need for comfort in the midst of pain; to another it’s the need for presence in the midst of loneliness; to another it’s providing hope in the midst of hopelessness. Our God seems to know just exactly what each of us needs most. This week, I invite you to lift up a prayer to the God whose medicine works on what is hurting most in all of us and may you experience a healing that only his particular kind of medicine can offer.
