Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Lenten Devotional 3-10-09

www.HopeandHelpCenter.org

March 10
John 4:43-54

When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee (for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in the prophet's own country). When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, 'Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.' The official said to him, 'Sir, come down before my little boy dies.' Jesus said to him, 'Go; your son will live.' The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, 'Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.' The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, 'Your son will live.' So he himself believed, along with his whole household. Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

When Jesus returns to Cana, he returns to the place of his first miracle, turning water into wine at the wedding feast. A royal official, moved by desperation and need because his son was close to death, approached Jesus to ask for the miracle of healing. The father not only received the miracle he asked for, he also received the gift of faith. If the father had seen the healing of his son only as a miraculous act, complete in itself, his appreciation would have been limited to the act by itself. However, the father understood the miraculous act as a sign about who Jesus is: the giver of abundant gifts and the giver of faith. As the giver of abundance gifts and faith, Jesus points to who God is.

I can easily read this story of a miracle which happened two thousand years ago and take it at face value. This is a miracle story which led to faith in the father and probably in the son as well. Jesus was there, alive, performing signs and wonders. Transposing the story into my own life, into the present day, can be a daunting task. How am I to understand the occurrence of miracles in my own life? Do I even recognize, let alone believe, that miracles occur in my life? What makes something a miracle? Is it the event itself? Is it the physical presence of Jesus performing a miracle? Or is it the way I perceive it? Jesus is not, after all, walking around performing these miracles today, is he?
Even in the presence of Jesus, most people didn't believe who Jesus said he was, let alone believe he could perform miracles. The man in this story did not have to attribute his son's healing to Jesus performing a miracle. Rather, he chose to see it as a miracle. He chose to build his faith on what he believed happened.

In my life experience, nothing would have ever led me to believe a church like MCC even existed, let alone that Ron and I would discover the most loving church family that either of us could ever imagine. This for us is a miracle. How do I understand the gift of more than $1,400,000 which all of us have combined to pledge during the worst economic times in our collective history? By any reasonable estimation, this was impossible. Yet, it happened! I see that as a miracle of no small proportion. Do you? I must testify that I cannot understand this without believing that God's Holy Spirit has infused you and me with the faith necessary to make those gifts. That, to me, is a miracle. How do I see the answers to prayers that are submitted to our prayer ministry or to prayer chains outside our church? For me, all of the answers are miracles, whether that was a healing or comfort or peace or something else.

When these miracles are compared to the healing of that one boy two millennia ago, they are equally powerful witnesses in terms of their ministry to the people both inside our church and in the community around us. If I see these miracles as complete in themselves, then I am missing the more important blessing. The even larger picture painted by the story of that little boy and his father is that miracles are a sign of the faithful character of God. My faith, God's faith given to me as a gift, grows to a firm belief that the next miracle is just around the corner, that life is full of the miracles of God for me and for you every day of our lives. cw

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