Can You Imagine

It would be hard to imagine if you couldn’t walk or see from the time you were born and now you are an adult.  Or think about having leprosy or any other deliberating disease you may have been born with for years and having to leave all your friends and family and live in a community with other lepers, especially in times where there was no cure and you never had any hope of getting better.  It would be hard for many of us to cope with those circumstances.  Can you imagine being in the dark for all those years needing help getting around or being crippled and having someone carry you around everywhere you went?  Then think about having leprosy and having to cover your head and holler, “unclean,” if someone were fifty feet downwind of you because it was so contagious, without even a hope whatsoever of ever being healed.  The word leprosy was used for different kinds of diseases and they were all bad, but the one I am referring to is the one where eventually your body starts deteriorating and in the end death results.  These things took place in Jesus’ day and there was no cure, like I said, and no hope of ever getting any better.  I realize that these things can happen today also and when they happen they are devastating, but there is far more help today than there was in Jesus’ day.

Now read this and see if this is hard to imagine, read Luke 17:11-19, “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’ When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’”

This seemed even harder for Jesus to imagine, they are all healed of a disease that would have killed them, they go to the priest and the priest examines them as the law required and they walk out healed.  Only one goes back glorifying God and he wasn’t quiet about it, and to top it off, he wasn’t even a full Jew, he was a Samaritan, half Jew and have Gentile and the Jews hated the Samaritans.  Now I realize that these nine lepers must have had family and friends they wanted to see and share the amazing news with, and I am pretty sure that the Samaritan did too, but he went back and thanked Jesus and praised God for his healing.

If you read about the Samaritan woman at the well that Jesus spoke to, you realize that Jesus loved everyone.  If you want to read about it, it is in John 4:6-43.

Let me brag on the Lord and praise my God for healing me a few years back when I had asthma severely for somewhere around 60 years.  I was in and out of hospitals and walk-ins getting breathing treatments and taking steroids and sprays sometimes three or four times a day.  Then one morning I was praying by myself and the Lord answered me and healed me, all praise and all glory go to Him.  It has been eight or more years since I was healed.  I was on the radio on 88.5, the Family life center, and shared my testimony and also had the privilege of sharing my testimony in my church, praise the Lord!  I have shared it many times over the years.  So it is hard for me to imagine that only one man would go back and thank the Lord and glorify God in that situation.  If you have had a miraculous healing, I would like to hear about it, write a comment so that I can rejoice with you and you don’t have to leave your name.

Enough said, may you have a super day and may he good Lord bless you and yours!!  Ps don’t forget to thank and praise the Lord, for He is worthy!!