"Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean."
He stretched out his hand, touched him, and said,
"I will do it. Be made clean."
Jesus wants us to be confident of his love for us. He wants us to be made clean at the deepest level. He does will our healing. We have trouble believing this. Like the leper, we've lived with our issues for long enough that we don't really believe change is possible. We tend to think that God must be indifferent to our concerns if he has let them go until now.
Maybe Jesus is waiting to heal us until he can do so by touching us directly. Jesus can heal the servant without visiting the household. But he does so in relation to the servant's master. The problems of sin and suffering in the world are not solved by an ambiguous force of goodness that just moves through the world like a wind setting things right. Rather, sin and suffering only find their answer in the person of Jesus Christ.
Behold, thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion:
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
Let us learn to walk with Jesus. It's true that we do have our issues. Abraham goes so long without a child. The leper lives so long with his disease. It is only thus because God wants to draw each of them close to himself. And it is the same with us. We need not fear to ask God for healing and blessing. We can do so assured that he loves us.
God replied: "Nevertheless, your wife Sarah is to bear you a son,
and you shall call him Isaac.
I will maintain my covenant with him as an everlasting pact,
to be his God and the God of his descendants after him.
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