Healing

Sometimes, I wonder what happened to the folks in the Bible after God healed them. 

After the blind man received his sight, after the deaf man's ears were opened to sound, after the lame man stood up on once-useless legs, after the bleeding woman stopped bleeding, after the demon-possessed child stopped having seizures, after the demoniac left the graveyard, after Lazarus walked out of the grave.... 

Most of us have some kind of brokenness in our lives that we'd love to get rid of. We have wild imaginations about what life would be like without the burden that we're carrying, without the thing that's holding us back, if only God would come and simply heal us. 

We think the blind man just starts walking around. We think the deaf man relishes every sound. We think the lame man goes and gets a job. We think the woman goes back to her family. We think the demon-possessed child goes out and plays. We think the demoniac becomes an elder of the city. We think Lazarus just picks up where he left off. 

But the truth about healing is that even after the problem is gone, the restoration requires hard work. 

A blind man has to learn how to use his eyes again. Did you know that vision is one of the three components of your balance system? Having not had to incorporate vision into his movement for a long time, it's likely that the blind man who can see again stumbles around for awhile. Maybe a long while. 

A deaf man has to learn to distinguish sound. When you've never heard anything, all things just sound like noise. The world can become a frightening place until you learn what all those sounds are. He is probably overwhelmed and scared and has to keep reminding himself what a gift his hearing is. 

A lame man's legs would be completely wasted - nothing but bone. He hasn't used those muscles in so long, they've atrophied. They're gone. Maybe he stands on bone with the euphoria of his healing, but it will be awhile before his legs are strong again. He has to keep using them to build the strength that he needs to keep using them. Some days, he'll tire out quickly. Some days, they'll ache. But every day, hopefully, they'll get a little stronger. 

The bleeding woman spent 12 years living unclean in her community. She probably still does some of the things she did as an unclean woman that she no longer needs to do. She catches herself calling out when encountering anyone on the street, then stops herself. She keeps going to the well in the hottest part of the day, to avoid contact with others, until she finally realizes she can go in the mornings. Old habits die hard. 

The demon-possessed child never knew when a seizure was coming, so it's hard to trust that one isn't coming now. How do you just go out and play, carefree, when your life has never been predictable? When you've never been able to trust your body because it hasn't been yours? 

The dead man knows he must die again... 

On one hand, I want to say that Jesus is capable of surpassing all of these problems. He can, I know for certain, give a healing that is so complete that there's no recovery necessary from the healing itself; things just work. 

At the same time, I've lived enough brokenness in my life to know that I've never had a healing like that. God has done absolutely amazing things for me, and if I ever told you all of them, we'd be here for weeks and you'd be begging me to shut up. But every time God has healed me, I have had to put in some of the work to regain the function that the brokenness took from me. As often as God has spoken into my life and made me well, He has not once spoken into my life and made me whole. 

Wholeness is an ongoing work. One that we're doing together - me and God - but a work nonetheless. 

So I wonder sometimes about the healings we read about the Bible. What happened afterward? 

There's part of broken, but healing, me that really wants to know.