Mark 2

What were you going to do, run away?

Your friends were bound and determined

to carry you to the itinerant preacher;

Never mind the time they had to take off work

or the crowded traffic of Capernaum

or that there really wasn’t space for them.

No, they were going to get you to Him

if they had to carry you the whole way

drag you up onto a roof

and dismantle someone else’s house.

And then, there you were: all eyes

on you, the interruption.

But He didn’t leave you hanging,

an impersonal prop in an object lesson,

a convenient sermon illustration.

He didn’t ask if you believed,

if you wanted to be healed,

to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

so help you God.

He looked at your friends with that

twinkling light of an acknowledging smile

rising in His dark eyes

and nodded, like He had heard their desperate prayers,

and labored breathing,

and swallowed curses as they wrestled

your unresponsive body to Him

like He knew their hearts.

Then He looked at you

and the world shattered, was reassembled,

like a broken bone or severed spinal cord

by a skillful surgeon who made each cell fit

by His words:

Child, your sins are forgiven.

You walked away from there

into a world made new.

(xaris and shalom)