I talked to a man a few weeks ago whose perseverance I’ve gotta admire.
He was in a bad place–really hurting. So he called a local support group (get this!) six times, when his message wasn’t returned, to get connected to the help he needed.
It’s a light-bulb moment for me.
Know what it made me think of? The guy in Luke 5 whose friends actually made a hole in the roof to get him to Jesus. See, there was this crowd all around him. And I can see the dotted lines and strategies forming in these guys’ heads. Okay, if we want him healed, we’ve gotta get him over there. When they couldn’t, they chucked convention and…made history.
I saw it this morning, too, a few pages over. It’s the woman who totally ignores all the high-and-mighties at a banquet, quietly steps in to where Jesus is, and decides to pour out a year’s worth of her salary on his feet. This is what I like: Jesus’ words to her. “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” I like that her drive, her acute awareness, of her need got her the healing she craved.
In all of our compelling, sometimes convoluted–and quite valid!–methods to draw people, the one I see most magnetically about Jesus is his ability to heal what aches, starting from the soul-level and moving out from there. (With the dude coming through the roof, Jesus actually didn’t heal his legs–his perceived problem–first [Luke 8:20-26]).
What Propels Us
And here are my takeaways from this in a wee blog post on a Tuesday.
- When people–any of us, any of our friends or family–sense their need, that hunger and vulnerability propel them forward. They become the incessant callers; the people dropping through the roof; the people ignoring social scorn.
- If anything, a formidable cultural obstacle to this is similar to one of my kids snacking on Easter candy before dinner: false satisfaction. The kid’s body is still starving. But his appetite is ruined for what will feed that need. As C.S. Lewis describes it in one of my favorite quotes:
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.*
Tim Keller puts it this way:
As long as you think there is a pretty good chance that you will achieve some of your dreams, as long as you think you have a shot at success, you experience your inner emptiness as “drive” and your anxiety as “hope.” And so you can remain almost completely oblivious to how deep your thirst actually is. Most of us keep telling ourselves that the reason we remain unfulfilled is because we simply haven’t been able to achieve our goals. And so we can live almost our entire lives without admitting to ourselves the depth of our spiritual thirst.
And that is why the few people in life who actually do reach or exceed their dreams are shocked to discover that these longed-for circumstances do not satisfy. Indeed they can enhance the inner emptiness by their presence.**
- As we seek to draw our friends to this life-altering force we’ve discovered, it requires of us keen listening; rapt understanding. I read this morning that “To meet any need, I first have to hear God’s whisper about that need” (Sara Hagerty, Unseen). For years I have found it true that “the Gospel flows best through the holes in our lives.” Where are our friends sensing that unquenchable thirst? We must ask wise, listening questions to understand the questions their souls are asking–the healing that propels them forward. That’s the place to meet them with Big Gulp-sized glass of Living Water.
Like this post? You might like
The Safe Place Series #1: Becoming a Friend Who Can Help, #2: On Giving Pat Answers the Boot, and #3: Becoming a Person of Refuge
Hungry: When Soul-cravings Leave Us Vulnerable
Satisfaction, and the Filling of Soul-holes
Spiritual Disciplines for Real Families: (Relatively) Painless Ideas for Kids to Share Their Faith
**Keller, Timothy. The Insider and the Outcast (Encounters with Jesus Series Book 2) (Kindle Locations 122-127). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
