“And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and
immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.”
Do you
remember being a small child and scraping your knee on the ground? There was
that moment of shock and pain when you realize that you stepped wrong and then
you felt your knee start to throb. You took a moment to gather your courage and
turned yourself over to gaze at your knee. You saw the ripped up skin and the
rocks clinging to the painful parts still, and your eyes began to glaze over
with tears, then you opened your mouth and started to cry.
Sometimes,
if you sat there for long enough, you were able to finally stand up and limp to
where someone would give you a band-aid. But other times, you would feel as
though it hurt too much for you to ever move it again. Finally your mom, or
your dad or your teacher would come over and bend down next to you and put a
hand on your shoulder. They would gaze down at your knee and back up at you.
“What happened? Why don’t we get you cleaned up?”
You’d
begin mumbling a few words about falling over and hurting yourself and they’d
nod sympathetically, wipe off some of the rocks off the wound, and hold a hand
out to pick you up. You’d stand up slowly, barely leaning on your leg with the
scarred knee and walk slowly with the adult until they got you to a place where
they could clean you up.
Now
think to today. You’re still that small child. You still fall down and hurt
yourself. You still look around for someone to pick you up and clean you up –
and sometimes you still try to walk around by yourself, until finally you show
someone your pain. But God desires to come to you and hold you, wipe off the
initial dirt, then pick you up and lead you to where you can be clean and
healed.
God is
doing the same to us every day – every time we fall. He holds out his hand and
lets us tell him what happened and he’ll clean you off, if you let him. It’s
easy for us to stand up quickly and decide our injury is of no consequence, and
try to limp off. It’s easy for us to not tell him what happened. It’s easy for
us to push away from the water he’s using to cleanse us. God wants us to simply
trust in Him like a child does.
Today,
WHEN I fall, I will hold my hand out to my Heavenly Father, and know that he
will cleanse me again and again. No matter how deep the wound, no matter how
shallow the scrape, no matter how bloody the mess, I will take the hand held
out to me and let Him clean me again.
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