But I'm not clean now. It is so hard to believe that Jesus wills it. Why not sooner? Why this life of leprosy, unclean, separate, and isolated? On the one hand I believe in the power of Jesus. On the other hand it doesn't seem to apply to me. My life has been like this for so long. Yet Jesus can do all things. I have seen it. I believe it. It is just that I don't think he wants to do this for me.
But this, just maybe, is what I've been waiting for.
And he stretched out his hand and touched him, saying,
Finally. Jesus is no longer just an abstract power at work everywhere but Here. Finally, encounter! In this moment my life and the life of Jesus intersect. It was impossible to experience being made clean through some abstract sense of the power of God. It has to be this. It had to be encounter. Here and now I learn that God is a person. I come to know him. He reaches out to me and touches me.
"I will; be clean."
This, specifically, is the sort of relationship which God desires with his people.
I will maintain my covenant with him as an everlasting pact,
to be his God and the God of his descendants after him.
It is never simply knowledge or a concept. From generation to generation it is a relationship. It isn't enough to know about him. We have to know HIM. He has many blessings for us. But his blessings aren't simply to fix our problems. They are a way which he says, 'I love you' to his people. We sometimes have to wait on his blessings so that he can more perfectly reveal his love for us. The most perfect example of this is the cross of Christ. History was waiting for this. Everyone and all creation needed it. But it didn't happen until the fullness of time (cf. Gal.4:4). Only then did he come and bear the cross for us. Yet can we imagine a more perfect 'I love you'? Let us trust in this love!
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment