Do you ever doubt if God will show up for you when you need him most?
Or do you wonder if he will be faithful for you in the same way you’ve seen him be faithful to others?
If you do, you’re not alone.
There is a part of me that has always had a hard time reconciling suffering in the world with the faithfulness of God. And, I know those two things can and do coexist in the world, and the times of our greatest pain are often the times where we experience God’s faithfulness in a way that we never have before. Like pain is the lens that brings God and his faithfulness into focus.
Still, in those times in my life, I find myself asking, “God, will you show up for me?”
And I know the answer is yes. It’s just never exactly how I saw it happening.
—
She was your average woman. She married young, gave life to her children, worked tirelessly to serve her family, raised little ones to adulthood, and saw them get married and have homes and families of their own. And with its joys, her life had its sorrows. She lost her husband and soon found her home with her daughter and son-in-law. She lived in their home and worked alongside her daughter to manage the responsibilities of daily life.
That is, until the day she started running a fever. The fever progressed, worsened. In a time where medical knowledge was limited, the doctors considered this kind of illness dire.
Up to this point, this doesn’t seem like a very remarkable story.
Enter, Jesus
Enter, Jesus.
For you see, this unnamed woman was the mother-in-law of one of Jesus’s disciples. Jesus went with Peter to his home, and Peter and his family asked Jesus to intervene. So Jesus, invited in, came to her. In her moment of critical need, He saw her . He went to her, spoke words of rebuke to the fever, words that brought healing and life. He reached out His hand and helped her up. For, the fever was gone in that instant.
Her health completely restored. Her life was once again whole. She immediately went and served Jesus and those who were with Him.
—
Now, there are many, many instances where Jesus healed someone who was sick. But this story stands out among them because three of the gospel writers recorded it. Each of them tells her story in two or three verses. To me, this makes it significant, something worth pausing to ponder.
Why did each of these three writers includes a few lines to capture this story for us?
It was personal
Perhaps because it was so personal. They felt the impact differently because it directly affected the people closest to Jesus. They knew this person.
I wonder if Peter and the other disciples had any hesitations, any doubts about asking Jesus to come attend to his mother-in-law. I wonder if they questioned if He would offer healing to those close to them, even though they had seen Jesus perform so many miracles already.
We don’t know how long she was sick, but we know that her healing deeply moved those there that day. Big miracles bring the wow factor. But sometimes, for a lot of us, it’s those intimate, personal moments where Jesus shows up that have the biggest impact on our hearts.
This story was a very personal one – both for Peter’s mother-in-law and for those there with Jesus, which shouldn’t be surprising because He is a very personal Savior. He loves us enough to set aside His rightful glory, to reach out to us at the cost of His own personal disgrace and shame, pain and death, to meet us in our need and restore us to life.
This personal Jesus
This personal Jesus.
He sees your brokenness, your wounds, your loneliness.
He knows your grief, your fear, your shame, your emptiness.
He sees the things that weigh heavily on your heart.
He shows up, often in ways we don’t expect.
He’s reaching out His hand to you, ready to rebuke the things that hold you captive, restore your life, and make you whole.
© 2018 Sara R Conley. All rights reserved.