The One Who Recognized

I have heard the story a million times, but this time it was different.

Ten people were trapped in a horrible disease. It starts out as painless pale spots on the skin, but it gradually turns into something much worse. Eventually, the victims lose sensation in their extremeties, which would leave them with giant wounds and sores on their hands and feet, sometimes even losing fingers and toes. But this leprosy not only damages the skin and the nerves, it damages the person’s heart. It destroys their relationships. Especially in the Jewish culture, lepers were outcasts. Untouchables.

These ten outcasts - with no where else to go – hear about Jesus. They find Him and come to him, but when you read the story, what Jesus does is somewhat unusual. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” he tells them. Instead of doing something for them right then and there on the spot, He gives them a referral. It almost seems like he sends them away.

It is on the way to the priests that the ten lepers notice that they are suddenly well. At the moment of their healing, Jesus wasn’t even around. Unlike His other healings, Jesus wasn’t there to spit on them or touch them.  He may have even been a mile away.

Imagine being one of those lepers after walking away from Jesus. Disappointed, maybe, that Jesus didn't really do what they were expecting him to do. Heads may have been hanging with discouragement. They had probably been to the priests about this before. On the way to the priests, they were healed, yet Jesus wasn't to be seen. He wasn't there at the moment. Nine kept walking because they were suddenly all better. Only one stopped in his tracks.

He may have turned and looked over his shoulder while still speaking to the others. “Hey, do you remember that man a mile back there? Jesus! He is the one who did this. He is the one who gave us this healing.”

The other nine may have looked back down the road, but they didn’t see anyone in sight, so they turned back around and just kept walking. To be honest, I don’t blame them. Jesus wasn’t there, so how could they be absolutely sure he was the one who healed them?

The amazing thing about the one leper who returned to Jesus was not that he was thankful. The amazing thing about that man was that He recognized Christ as the healer. In the middle of a lonely dusty road on the way to the priests when he was healed, he remembered Jesus and accredited the miraculous healing to Him.

Today is my last day in Chimala. We have been here exactly one month and one day. If you had told me a month ago everything that I would see and experience and come to know while I was here, I would have been blown away. So here I am, absolutely amazed at what God has done in me and around me over the past five weeks. To Him be the glory.

The next time I write, I will be back home in the United States. So while I am here in Chimala, I want to write one last thing from Africa. It is something that I have learned from the thankful leper, the one who recognized Jesus as the healer. I, too, have come to know Jesus as the miraculous healer. He is not here in physical form, but I saw Him do work that can only be described as miraculous. Babies stopped breathing and then started again. A woman who had no chance of living after her surgery was discharged a few days ago. There was one man with severely altered mental status after a accident. There was nothing we could do for him, but the next morning he was amazing better –alert and oriented – for no reason at all. It was certainly not a result of anything we did. A dehydrated baby was on the brink of death, but God brought her back to life against all odds. Yes, I believe in miracles, and I recognize Jesus as the healer.

So I return to Him. I walk down these dusty red roads of Tanzania, which may have been much like the dusty road the leper walked down to meet Jesus. And I thank Him. I thank Him for the healing I have seen, and I thank Him for healing me. I thank Him for holding life and death in His hands. I thank Him for miracles.