Don´t We Get It? We are Sick!

“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) Mark 7:18-19 (NIV)

Come on guys, Jesus says.  How many times must I tell you?  What must I do to make you see where I am coming from?  Must you always drag down the spiritual and the Divine?  Why are you so stubborn in focusing all attention on external material and expressions?  Why is it so difficult to understand that all things stem from something much deeper and more serious?  How long will you try to put a bandage on a virus or cancer?  When will you open your hearts and see that as long as you hold to your shallow interpretations, you will never be available for any real healing.  Turn from your ways; come to God for insight, healing and a better Way.  “Listen, to me” Jesus says, “I know what I am talking about.”

He is right, we are that dull.  We always have been, throughout the generations, all the way back as our history can take us.  We would blame the fruit, the rules, the tobacco and the alcohol.  We would leave the infected soul all blackened with sin untouched.  We refuse to see our terminal illness and forever accuse the vile thoughts, actions and symptoms of our sad state.  We would rather say that this is good and that is bad and leave our hearts without hope of healing.  Standing far from the only Doctor who can really heal us in any true sense of the Word, we busy ourselves with covering the spots and signs of our sickness that appear on the outside.

When will we open our ears and our eyes?  When will we start to take our Savior serious enough to let Him expose our disease and let His presence and His righteousness heal our suffering souls?  There are no people alive anywhere who are without the need of the healing that Jesus brings.  This group of people or that may start to feel better when the treatments of their religion reduce some of the symptoms.  We may reduce signs of stealing, killing, drunkenness or smoking.  We start to feel better, but it doesn´t mean that we are healed.  We can ease the painful symptoms of a reckless worldly living and greedy personal attitudes bring.  But for all our attained righteousness and improved lifestyles our religion may bring to us, it does not always go deep enough to rid this cancer we have thriving in our hearts.

We need to let our Savior´s words fall on receptive ears.  We each need to let His healing sink past all the externals and down to the very center of our beings where the cancer is grown into our very nature.  We need to edge a little closer and much more often to our Great Physician.  Only He can heal us and that He can only do if we submit ourselves into His care.  We need to resist our natural urge to attack the symptoms, place our Band-Aids and make ourselves think we are better.  We need Him.  We need closeness, we need honesty, we need Him inside of us working His healing and exchanging His nature for our old cancerous one.

Dear Jesus, the disease of sin has so inflicted us that we can no longer detect it.  But Your words cut through and shine light onto our illness.  Please examine our hearts.  Expose our sickness so that we may come to You for healing.  Dig deep past all the symptoms, past the external signs and let You presence burn out of our souls the virus that affects the human race.  One day, as You say, we will rejoice and have cause to thank You, for Your concern and the remedy which only You can bring.

Amen