Songs for Tuesday Mornings ~ Up on the Roof

I've read the Bible through a couple times and I know they have always been there.

I know I have read them, heard sermons about them, heard stories of people claiming them.

I'm talking about the verses in the Bible about Healing.

The New Testament and especially the Gospels are full of stories, not just parables but real stories of people who were physically healed by Jesus.

Yes, I have read them.

I have heard and worked with missionaries who have witnessed and told amazing accounts of modern day people being healed.

Yet, I have never been able to relate to these stories of physical healing.

I grew up watching the most important person in my life, deal with physical pain every single day.

It wasn't a now and then thing.

It was an every day, all day pain.

Thankfully, there were days in her young life that she was not in pain, but my mom suffered from rheumatoid arthritis every day of my life.

I can remember being about nine years old and knowing not to ask for certain things because it would be too painful for her to do.

When I was 10 years old, she found much relief from this pain by having both of her knees replaced.

Visually, she did not look much different. But physically, the knee replacements took away a lot of the pain.

To look at my mom, you would think that her arthritic hands would be the most painful part of her body...

But she often said, that the pain had burned out of her hands long ago....

Because that's what arthritis does, it eats away, deforms and then moves on to another part of the body only to repeat the process over and over, joint by joint.

So, The remnants of pain were very visible in my young life's eyes.

When I read about Jesus healing the lame, it was in comprehensible to me that this could happen in a modern-day situation.

I SAW my mom's hands.
I mean, her hands.....

I could not by any stretch of my (very active) imagination…
ever imagine my mom's hands being "healed."

So, because of this always present visible pain,

I think I began to see "healing" as a symbolic thing.

A sign of Jesus' time, but for our times, it was more of a metaphor or something to be used symbolically.

Yes, we can be "healed." 

Jesus can make us whole...

But, for the most part I believed that meant the healing of our mind, heart and/or brokenness.

But, not necessarily that of our bodies.
I saw my mom's hands.
I couldn't grasp it, so I didn't ask for it.

That was until my brother got cancer.

His first go round with cancer,
I followed my normal..."trouble, trouble, trouble" routine....

Shocked, denied, bargained, and finally settled down to accept it, hand it over to God and the professionals and settled in to pray for it and the course of action.

And the very intelligent doctors did what incredibly smart doctors do best.

He had surgery and they removed his kidney along with the cancer.

Healed?
Yes, I suppose,
because everything went as the doctors planned.

Now, I can't tell you what exactly happened in between the first time he told me he had cancer and the second time he told me he had cancer.

All I know was my reaction the second time was extremely different than the first.

I do know that I had been undergoing a bit of soul surgery myself.

I was reading the Bible again, but also reading other spiritual works.

Reading old journals.

Dismantling old views of God and rebuilding a new views with much more possibilities.
Embracing my story...trying to live more whole-heartedly.

I felt my soul waking up.

And for some reason, despite the more dismal view the doctors took on this reoccurrence of cancer, I felt a strange positivity that my brother was going to be alright.

I call it strange because, being a melancholy personality,
positivity is not my normal first response. 

For example, Just last week, when I was talking with a friend about health and how crazy amazing our bodies are…
even when parts of them are broken, and the more grateful we are for what is right, the better we will feel, and feeling better will make us more grateful and quite possibly, even have an influence on what is not working. She looked at me a bit strangely and said "who are you and what have you done with my friend Nancy?…I mean, no offense, but you have always been a bit of an Eeyore…!"

I had to laugh and say "I know!"
And believe me, it's such a strange feeling to be embracing these thoughts, but I have to go with it cause I am experiencing it and believe it!

Anyway, I happened to be reading through the Gospels a month or so after I found out my brother's cancer was back.

I was reading the story about the time Jesus was at a house and people were bringing their sick for him to lay his hands on them and heal them.

The word had got out that he was there and the house was packed.

The storyteller nonchalantly tells the tale of how there was a man who could not move and they were carrying him on a bed, but because the house was full, they couldn't get him thru the door or even a window,  so they made a hole in the roof and lowered him down in front of Jesus:

^{Luke: 17-26}
 One day when Jesus was teaching, Pharisees and legal experts were sitting nearby. They had come from every village in Galilee and Judea, and from Jerusalem. Now the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal. Some men were bringing a man who was paralyzed, lying on a cot. They wanted to carry him in and place him before Jesus, but they couldn’t reach him because of the crowd. So they took him up on the roof and lowered him—cot and all—through the roof tiles into the crowded room in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

The legal experts and Pharisees began to mutter among themselves, “Who is this who insults God? Only God can forgive sins!”

Jesus recognized what they were discussing and responded, “Why do you fill your minds with these questions? Which is easier—to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you will know that the Son of Man has authority on the earth to forgive sins” —Jesus now spoke to the man who was paralyzed, “I say to you, get up, take your cot, and go home.” Right away, the man stood before them, picked up his cot, and went home, praising God.

All the people were beside themselves with wonder. Filled with awe, they glorified God, saying, “We’ve seen unimaginable things today.”

Now, I have probably heard and/or read this story over a hundreds times.

Yet…

not once have I given it more then the amount of time that it takes to read it…

and go onto the next chapter.

But this time.

This time was different.

This time I thought about my brother.

I thought about those people who brought this sick man to Jesus.

It doesn't say whether they were family of the man or friends of the man.

It doesn't say who thought of it, or how they did it.

It just barely tells the story of what they did to get that man in front of the one who could heal him.

And I thought about them.

I thought about how determined they were that they brought the man to Jesus in the first place.

I thought about how desperate they must have been to get their brother/their friend help.

I thought about how when they heard that there was a man who is healing the sick,

how much hope that must have generated... 

About how much risk it took to even let their fearful hearts hope that there might be a chance for healing.

I thought about how they might of had to even convince the man who was sick that he should go to Jesus and to take the chance.

I thought about how they may have had to have take off work, drop everything, and to figure out a way to transport the sick man from his house to the house where Jesus was.

I thought about them carrying this man, their brother, their friend. Carrying him thru the streets on his bed/stretcher.

And then, after all this, to get to where Jesus was and not be able to get into the house because of the crowd.

And then, I thought about their desperation. 

The moment of "trouble, trouble, trouble," about how they could have given up.

About how they could've said well maybe next time, maybe tomorrow.

Or, maybe, it wasn't meant to be.

How, they could've gone home feeling good that they did everything they could, that they tried…

But, I love to think about one of them looking up to the corner of the house…and then to the roof.

The crazy engineer that said, what if….?

I want to meet the one that said "hey guys," what if we…. 

The one with the bold idea of going in through the roof.

Now I'm picturing a modern-day house, but, I know that the houses in Jesus' time would not be as enormous as ours, that you wouldn't be cutting thru shingles, and wood and insulation and attics.

But, I'm quite sure they may have needed a ladder.

And I'm quite sure that the man who "could not move" was not light and could be of no help getting himself up the ladder.

And I can't imagine the the strength that it would took to get a man on a stretcher up a ladder onto a roof...

let alone, the tools, time and gall that it took to saw a hole into someone else's house? 

I have to ask, just how much did this sick man mean to these people that did this for him…

how desperate were they they he be healed?

And that is when I lost it.

That is when I thought of my brother.

And I thought of his wife,

And I thought of his two sons,

And I thought of his brothers and sisters,

And I thought of the people who call him Uncle

And I thought of our Sunday Dinner Crew

And I thought of the men who call him their boss

And I thought of his friends and all the faces I saw a party he hosted.

And I thought of the men who gathered around a kitchen counter and figured out a way to move a Log Cabin down the road in the middle of the night...

And I got it

I got it

I don't know what it look like for Jesus to heal the sick…

(I mean, if you only saw my moms hands)

But what I do know, is there is not one person on the list above that would hesitate for   

one.single.minute

to do whatever it took, to get my brother into that house.

Even if it meant tearing the whole roof off shingle by shingle.

And I do know,

What hope looks like and what happens when people who have hope put all their positive energy in one direction in order to see this person be made well.

I believe in the Divine.

I believe that God can Heal

Body, Soul and Spirit.

But I am also beginning to believe that it is not just a sit back and wait type of thing.

I'm beginning to believe our minds, our souls and our hearts, and even our physical actions all play a part in our healing, the healing of those we love and the healing for the world at large.

Fear, conflict, anger….when experienced…all change our body chemistry and mostly for the worse.

Why can't the opposite be true?

Why can't hope, courage, daring greatly, gratefulness, positivity and gratitude...when practiced and experienced change our body chemistry for the better?

Hope.
Hope Matters.
Hope can heal.

And the crazy thing is, this melancholy pessimist named, Eeyore is starting to believe it can!

Directions to here:

Dave, Levi, Tammy, Bobby, Jess….

and countless others...

Here's to raising the roof.
We love you and are up there with you.