The Road to Easter: Desperate People Do Desperate Things
(NIV) Mark 2:3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
I can still recall as a small child hearing this account of the paralyzed man being lowered through a hole in the roof. So many thoughts swirled through my head. How did they get up on that roof with a man in a stretcher? Did they bring something with them to dig through the roof? Won’t the owner of the house be mad?
Have you ever been desperate? The New Oxford Dictionary says desperation is a feeling that the situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with. But the men carrying their friend to Jesus clearly saw beyond the impossibility and into the realm of the miraculous.
As we go through our Lenten journey, it is a time of examination of our own spiritual wellness. May we each become so desperate to be in the room with Jesus that we, too, are willing to go to extreme measures to be in His presence and to hear those life-giving words, “Your sins are forgiven.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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