Yesterday's post was a downer but its okay. I was reading Matthew again and something I've not considered before occurred to me. Jesus performed many miracles. He healed the man with leprosy after he asked, He healed the Roman officer's servant, the woman with the issue of blood, and then the daughter of the head of the synagogue, I call him Sid.
In most of the cases these people came to Him and asked that he heal them. Except for the woman (I don't have a name for her). And the thing that I realised was that they all had different levels of faith. Some was very incredible, like the Roman Officer, he said just say the word here and my servant will be healed and that is really amazing. To think that this man was not even a Jew. I have no idea if he believed in Jesus but he had a very logical reason for trusting that Jesus' words had power.
Then there's Sid who interrupts Jesus to tell him his daughter is dead, and asked that he lay his hands on her so she will come back to life. I don't know if it was common at the time for people to die and come back to life but he must really be either desperate to believe anything or really have faith in Jesus. I mean death is a big deal.
And then there's the woman who just determined that all it will take for her to be finally free from her predicament was a touch on the fringes of Jesus' clothes. Why she would think that is beyond me but she got her healing. Sid needed Jesus to be physically present and to touch his daughter. It's so incredible that these things happened because people just had a simple premise for believing and in some cases, acted on it. That is very reassuring.
That being said there are cases where even though we have all the faith in the word and act all we want nothing happens. That is not a reason to disprove the fact that it is possible. I mean you can't say because I followed this formula and it didn't work for me its bogus. I'm sure there are reasons these edge cases exist but still, simple premise, faith in Jesus and some action in the direction of faith is always a helpful way to go.
I was really encouraged this morning.
-ONWARD!