[Faith-talk] more comments on healing

[Sandra Streeter]

Sarah, I love your thinking about people directly approaching Christ—the only other place I could see where someone else went to Him on behalf of a person was where the boy had a demon that kept throwing him into the water or fire, in which case, obviously, he was too incapacitated to seek healing himself. But, in the main, it was up to the person with the condition; and, even then, Christ would always ask instead of presuming: “Do you want to be healed?” I’m sure His motive was to allow the person an out if, for whatever reason, their answer was, indeed, “No.”

Linda, I KNOW that internal response to the guy who was so aggressive about offering (foisting on you, really) healing: “You mean, it would make your ministry look good if I got healed!” Don’t think I haven’t been tempted! So much of where that approach (even the less-aggressive-but-sometimes-still-annoying approach) is pure ignorance. Most people without blindness, autism, paraplegia, etc., can’t see life as good if they were to have the condition. Very similar to the reason for consistently-low-expectations set for blind people that we’re always talking about in the NFB: they don’t ask us to meet challenges because they can’t think, for the world, how on earth they would do it “if I were blind.” In fact, one of the things I think we should be praying about is that old, stubborn, archetypal thinking that goes back thousands of years, and, at least in my mind, is directly from the devil, who wants no glory to come to the Lord and resents it if you or I deign to meet our challenges successfully and are examples of what Christ can do in a life freely offered to Him, whatever the circumstance!

Yes, I am blind with autism (or, as I heard in a really cool news story the other day of a local kid who’s making gains through pet therapy, “awesome-tism”—I think I’m going to adopt that word)!

A side comment that plays into why I don’t pray for blindness healing: I think I complain a heck of a lot more about being extremely short (f-10 and 3/4—gotta mention the 3/4, you know) than about the challenges of blindness!!! Right now, with only a (at most) 5-year Aspergers diagnosis, my challenge is to apply the principles of successfully living as a blind person to that: to not fixate on the troublesome aspects, to not attribute everything to autism; on the other hand, to look for the plusses and the gifts than can be attributed to autism, too. Sometimes, life is what you make of it.



Sandra
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Little Prince 


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