Matthew 10:1
And when he had called unto him his twelve
disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to
heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.
I’m diseased.
That is, I have a genetic motorneuron disease that has rendered my
muscles weak as waste, mostly useless, crumpled me up and left me totally
physically dependent on others for my everyday needs. I can’t eat unless somebody puts food
directly into my mouth.
I’m also a Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
I attend Church every week, pray every day, help people in need as best as I
can and share my faith with others. My
faith prompts me to give witness to the power of Christ – and yet this man whom
I profess to be God Incarnate, whom I know to be a healer of sickness and
disease while he was upon this earth, this Christ I adore has not healed me of
my disease. I have faith and am a good
girl – and still I sit in my wheelchair.
How do I reconcile that? How do I
justify that?
Because I love Christ, I’m not a person who needs scientific
proof for everything in life. I don’t
live on the surface of things and my identity is not caught up solely in my
physicality. And, unlike when Jesus of
Nazareth walked upon the earth as the seemingly ordinary son of a carpenter, I
live in a time when his sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection from the
dead has already happened. His true
identity has already been recognized and proclaimed – and I believe in Him. I don’t need fanfare to get me to the
show. I don’t need sugar in order to do the
right thing.
I live here, part of the terrible beauty of God’s
complex Creation and I see both the beauty and the terror of what God has made…
of what God has given. We are, indeed, “fearfully
and wonderfully made.”[1] I am a creature of body and soul, made in the
image and likeness of God, sanctified by the Incarnation of Christ and born
anew through him by his Blood. God’s
body, Christ’s body, was and is important in intimately and infinitely uniting
God and Man, in yielding forth at-one-ment and making manifest true love. My own body is important because through it I
can particularly marvel at the glorious splendor of God’s power in all the
universe… My body is important because with it I can sooth the distressed and
heal the afflicted and nurse the developing… My body is important because in it
I experience what it is to love and to be loved as a free willed human being
with the ability to reflect the divine. My
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, the Power of the Most High, and I care for
myself, physically and spiritually, because I am one of God’s precious Creations
and, through me, God acts upon the Earth.
What does it matter if my legs cannot walk so long as I dance with
joy? What does it matter if my breathing
is labored and weakening so long as I sing with love? Sure, it would be nice to be able to walk and
to be physically strong, but I don’t need an obvious miracle to heal me. I’m already healed.
Christina Chase
No comments:
Post a Comment