As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.
— Mark 1:29-31
The next personal encounter of transformation is a women who is sick. Mark describes the illness as a momentary plight: a fever that has caused her to lie in bed and rest. She has a sickness that will not take her life forever, but will take her life today.
Essentially, she has a flu, a stomach bug, or a virus. The type of disease a doctor will heal by prescribing rest, hydration, and Tylenol. In a few days, you’ll be fine. She doesn’t harbor demons, she isn’t paralyzed. No big deal. A fever took her out of her purpose for just a moment. And yet, Jesus went to her, took her hand, and helped her up so she could live and serve unhindered.
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A few years ago I had thriving pain in my hands and it lasted for months. At night I would wake up feeling as though knives were being stabled through my palms. My knuckles felt like I had punched a wall. Typing an email took the strength and resolve of storming a castle. Tearfully, I couldn’t hold my children, I couldn’t drive myself, and I couldn’t hold a book. On bad days I took ibuprofen non-stop. I took Ubers. I dictated emails to Siri. Doctors prescribed medication with disastrous side-effects that resulted in anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide. After a short trial with meds, I took a cocktail of supplements and vitamins.
I coped, just as I had with my anxiety, insecurity, lust, and anger. Mostly, I managed. Just like my inner wounds, somedays I was debilitated by the pain. Like my nagging brokenness, there were moments of outbursts.
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Sometimes, it isn’t monsters in the closet that keep us from the life we were made for, it’s the knapsack of nagging frustrations and festering wounds that keep us bedridden. The slight sense of failure. The subtle belief you can’t measure up. The fleeting thought that you aren’t worthy. The tiny but regular bouts with anxiety. The mostly controlled urges for selfishness. The small but mostly won temptations with lust.
It’s not a big deal, we tell ourselves: I go to therapy monthly. I have methods of coping. Like taking a pill for a headache, we consume distractions until they seemingly go away. Until they return a few hours, days, or weeks later. Forever self-medicating, forever hindered, we can’t seem to taste the abundant life of walking whole. Year after year, we sequester these “small sicknesses” and year after year, we live less.
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Jesus sees you, goes to you, helps you up, and says: “Arise!” Jesus changes your life from sick, to whole. In this act, Jesus shows us another hope for his humanity: wholeness. But it doesn’t stop there. Once her fever left and she got back on her feet, she served others. Jesus not only raises us up and not only does he make us new. He makes us the focal point of his work in the world. Again, the Apostle Paul tells us what is happening when he raises us up:
“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
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I wonder if the reason we struggle so deeply to serve Jesus with all of we are because we’ve not allowed him to raise all of us, to heal all our wounds, and to care for all seemingly trivial needs.
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More posts in this series: