Desperate...that's the word that describes the royal official in Cana. He is desperate enough to turn to Jesus. Word had gotten around about what had happened at the wedding a few weeks earlier - Jesus turning the water into wine. In a small town, you can't stub your toe and not have ten people know about it! Just think how the news must have spread about Jesus' first miracle - his first sign.
We get desperate when we face a crisis of some kind. Our child is acting out, out of control and we don't know how to connect. I've just received a diagnosis of cancer and may not have long to live. My marriage is coming apart at the seams. Just when I thought I was financially secure, the stock market crashes. The secrets that I've tried to conceal have been exposed. The pain of a hurtful or abusive event is overwhelming. My battle with addiction is robbing my life with its lies and false promises, and now it has me nailed to my habits.
Jesus can seem so indifferent at first. It seems so out of character. Why? Because Jesus knows our humanity well - he's faced everything that confronts us, yet without the sin. He knows we want a miracle worker who can give us a sign - a quick fix. We don't really want what God has to offer - a transformational relationship. We want a 'deal.' It's the vending machine God of our dreams. Put in your fifty bucks, out pops God, and your crisis is resolved. Then, we go on living just as we had before, grateful that God has rescued us. God can now disappear until the next crisis when he's needed again.
"Sir," the man cries in desperation, "come down before my child dies."
Jesus doesn't turn into some theatrical healer with flair and dramatic gestures. He simply announces that the man's son will live. The man accepts Jesus at his word and returns home. As his servants greet him with the news that the boy is well, he makes the connection between the time of his son's healing and Jesus saying the boy would live. The man and his entire household put their trust in him. This is the response that Christ longs for - that he deserves.
In this Lenten journey, is there a place of desperation in your life? Are you looking for God to be the source of a quick fix or are you longing for a real, life changing relationship?
Jesus' Word posseses the same creative power that brought creation into being. His creative Word has the power to redeem, to restore, to heal. He will speak that Word to people who are desperate enough to truly believe - and that Word is enough.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I am always amazed at the response of the official. He accepts Jesus at his word and returns to His home. I do not possess faith of this caliber. I like to wallow and wrestle [ well I don’t like to, but I do.}
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to trusting God. Faith for me is a process where God brings me to a place of dependence on Him and then I trust. But I only come to a place of complete dependence when I spend time in silence, and his presence. One on one, is the fertile ground of development of my belief and trust.
It is when I am stripped bare and realize that I am utterly dependent on God for everything that I come to a place of faith. I become certain that he will provide for all my need. He has provided me with life temporal and eternal. His grace is sufficient, word comforting, and nature unchangeable.
This same Jesus who healed the official’s daughter with a word, Indwells me. I am amazed and in awe of this The Eternal God indwelling broken me!!!