Broken Babies ...

It is easy to see our dogs as the perpetual babies of our families.  Why?  Because just like babies, they love, all the time, and know love more than those of us who are jaded by age and “responsibilities”.  After a hard day, it is the dog who comes to lick you better.  They are not certain if dog kisses will really change your day or your future, but you seem to need one, so let the shower of dog kisses commence.  And if you ever show even the slightest hint at wanting to play; well you have an ever-willing and excited partner in the dog.  Pick up a ball.  We dogs will chase it.  Pick up a tug of war rope.  We dogs will grab the other end of it.  And if you lay down on the floor near us; we dogs will jump all over you continuing that shower of dog kisses you interrupted the last time you moved away to “clean up”.  The love of dogs is constant, even forgiving, and often more healing than we humans might first learn to appreciate.

I know dogs are not humans.  I know humans are more important in the circle of life.  But I also have witnessed many an adult making silly coo-ing noises when they kiss a baby’s face, just the same as they make high-pitched loving speech when they pet the dog and show affection.  Offering love to anything that is bound to return that love is a lure most of us are suckers for.  And frankly, we need that kind of unconditional love in our lives.  Babies become precious to us for this reason just like dogs do; that we are able to establish a bond of love that seems impervious from the world.  And so we look to protect them.  Take care of them.  Meet whatever needs we believe they have even if that means trying to guess what they are (babies and dogs have a hard time getting their speeches understood).  The greatest horror of our lives then is when we encounter a “broken” baby, no matter what the species.  Fixing what is broken then occupies our mind like nothing else.  And when we find we are actually powerless to fix what is broken, we have then only one hope.  A hope in Jesus.

Again I know the feelings for a human baby will always far outweigh those for a dog.  That is as it should be.  But love need not be a competition.  And loss, or potential loss, is crippling no matter what kind of love you risk losing.  There may be degrees of loss.  But no one looks to experience it.  And everyone wants to make the suffering get better, no matter who or what is suffering.  That too, is as it should be.  If you are able to look upon suffering and remain unmoved, it is possible you have never felt the love you should have in your own life.  Something Jesus would love to change.  And something His followers should be aiding Him in doing.  When hope dwindles, there is only prayer.  For some of us, prayer is a constant.  For others, we turn to prayer when there is nowhere else to turn.  But that does not change where God is throughout the process.

We think sometimes that our grief, and our worry, and our suffering is “only” ours.  We presume in our pain, that our God does not share any of it with us.  That kind of image of God would have Him far away and unmoved and uncaring about the pain that exists in our very up-close personal world.  But that could not be farther from the truth.  Before for the first glimmer of sadness hits your heart, it was first in our God’s.  He aches first, and much deeper.  He is forced to watch us make choices to pollute our world, ourselves, and each other.  He is unable to “make” us choose to love, without first making us nothing but robots.  Robots is not what He created.  Babies are.  We are the babies of our God.  The creatures that populate our world were supposed to be the babies we were to take care of and love.  But sin broke all that.  And further sin makes it even worse.  Leaving us where we are.  Leaving God forced to watch it all unfold, until at last it must be forced to an ending.  Prior to that day however, there remains grief.  Grief in the heart of God, as there is grief in our own hearts.  Some grief God is able to undo in the course of His will and our requests.  Some grief He is forced to endure on a scale of broken heartedness we will only ever share a glimpse of.

And imagine the scale of it.  Imagine the grief of your own life, now magnified across 7 billion others, across more than 6000 years of our history.  God has endured the grief of Adam, to the grief of you.  And His pain is infinitely deeper than our own, as His love is infinitely deeper than our own.  So when we come to Him to ask for deliverance; we do not come to a cold unfeeling God unwilling to get involved.  Instead we come to a God already in way deeper pain than we feel.  A God who longs to grant our requests to “fix” the broken babies of His life.  He is not unmoved; He is very moved.  And where the greater will of our God to save us all can accommodate it; He is quick and happy to move to our deliverance.  That is who we serve.  That is who we have always served.  A God who invented love, who is comprised of Love, always wishes to treat His “babies” so much better even, than we would treat our own.

Take a case in point in the gospel of Luke chapter five of the letter to his friend.  Picking up in verse 12 it says … “And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”  Here is one of God’s babies finding Him, and begging for deliverance from a disease there was no medical cure from in his day.  Why this man?  I cannot answer that.  Why not every leper in Israel?  Not having lived at that time, I cannot say for certain if that is eventually what occurred.  But I can trust in the love of our God.  Then and now.  The question we all then ask, is why not me?  To that I can only say, our lives are mortal because of the entrance of sin in our world.  Whether sooner, or later, an ending faces us all.  But only a temporary ending, for in the world to come, no sin will ever rise again.  No evil with it.  And perfect peace and happiness because of the absence of disobedience, and the effects it brings upon us all.  But to the question of this leper there was an immediate answer.

Luke continues in verse 13 saying … “And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. [verse 14]  And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.”  Jesus does not question this man about his faith.  Nor does He ask the man to recite the ten commandments, or recite the prophecies, or to bow down and worship Him as the Messiah.  This is not about the man’s heritage, or his doctrine, or his faith.  It is about instead the love of our God, who LONGS to do this restoration to all of us.  He does not withhold blessing based on some pre-cursor the man must offer.  It is given quickly and without reservation.  The first thing Jesus does is to reach out and touch the man (the way this disease spreads from person to person).  Jesus has no fear of contracting what this man has, but instead MUST show him physically that he is loved.  Then instead of demanding worship to Himself, He asks the man to keep quiet.  Jesus asks the man to go and fulfill the process the priests have had all along to heal this disease through the power of God.  Something the priests have long since abandoned losing faith it works, or that our God cares.  So many lepers exist in Israel where none should.  This is what happens when we lose faith in our God’s keen desire to do what is impossible for us.  When we lose sight of ourselves as the “broken” babies of God, we lose faith in His desire to do anything about it.

But silence was not what occurred despite the asking.  Luke continues in verse 15 saying “ But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. [verse 16]  And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed. [verse 17]  And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them. [verse 18]  And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before him. [verse 19]  And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.”  The fame of Jesus as a healer spread throughout Israel like wildfire.  The salient question; why has that wildfire gone out in our church, and in our hearts?  Why do we let an image of a remote God become the norms of our thinking instead of the aberration of Satan’s design that it should be.  Jesus has not changed.  Why have we?

Luke wants to show his friend who will read this gospel letter that the impossible to us, is NOT impossible to God.  First he recounts the story of the leper who was healed merely by asking.  Now he recounts the story of a paralytic who will be more than healed.  Luke continues the story picking up in verse 20 saying … “ And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee. [verse 21]  And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone? [verse 22]  But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts? [verse 23]  Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? [verse 24]  But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house. [verse 25]  And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God. [verse 26]  And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange things to day.”

Many things to unpack here.  First, our Jewish forefathers had one thing absolutely right.  ONLY God can forgive sins.  For anyone else to claim it, it is indeed blasphemy.  When any of our brothers or sisters come to us with sin-laden hearts seeking forgiveness, we must be careful in our language to insure we point them only to Jesus to forgive sins, and assure them if they ask Jesus, they will be forgiven.  We, and no other man, has anything to do with that process other than to point them where they can find forgiveness for themselves from the same source we must use ourselves.  Second, since only God can forgive sins, notice what God did – He forgave sins!!  All of that man’s burdens, weighed down by his sins, were washed away in a moment.  Perhaps we who grieve should take note.  The healing of our souls is perhaps more important than the healing of our bodies.  When we babies break, it is not inconceivable to note our sins do more harm to us, than the damage we incur from disease and tragedy.  To be healed of our sins, is perhaps then even more important than to be restored in our physical frames.

And finally, it was not just the man’s sins that were forgiven, it was his body as well.  Luke reminds us all that Jesus heals us completely both body and soul.  Jesus did not come just to make us better.  He came to restore us to what He intended us to be.  To the image of God He originally intended us to be.  The world, that is the universe He will call us home to, will be one where love itself is the center premise for everything.  Love in our God.  Love in us.  And yes, love in the dogs we so love in our world today.  To have a broken baby is to find our God’s heart aches in alignment with our own.  So to ask His healing, even over something so simple as a pet we cherish; is to unlock His heart on our behalf.  I know that should my dog be healed it can ONLY be the power of prayer that healed her.  And should Jesus elect not to heal my dog in this world, He will restore her to me in the next one.  Something that loves so unconditionally can only be an ambassador of the love the next kingdom will be based upon.  That is a love I have faith in.  And I hope it is a love I will do better at sharing here and now.