Leprosy
“A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’ Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.”
Today’s Text: Matthew 8:1-13 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
We are told nothing about this man, except that he had leprosy. People during that time would have believed that he was afflicted with leprosy by God because of sin. And even the leper believed it. He wasn’t sure if God would heal him because of sin.
But Jesus demonstrated God’s love by reaching out and touching the man. In touching the man, Jesus Himself would have been considered defiled. But God cannot be defiled.
Leprosy is not merely a skin disease, but a neurological disease. It attacks nerve cells so that lepers are desensitized to pain. The leprosy does attack skin cells as well, but the lack of pain leads to lack of treatment, leading to the spreading of infection.
When the world becomes desensitized to pain caused by sin, the infection of sin spreads unhindered and unnoticed.
AIDS, like leprosy, is a disease that reveals the world’s lack of sensitivity to sin. The world put a tremendous amount of resources into finding a cure for AIDS once it started impacting rich people in the world. No one really seemed to care when it was ravaging poor Africans. But all the resources went into healing the symptom of the disease, not the source, which is a distorted and self-destructive view of human sexuality.
The same could be said of COVID. COVID also revealed the world’s lack of sensitivity to sin. The sin behind COVID is human greed and pride. The evidence strongly suggests that the disease began because some segment of the military-medical-technology-industrial complex was experimenting with super viruses in Wuhan China. Everyone had their own reasons.
The way that COVID disrupted the supply chain in the world revealed how it had been built on excessive greed and profiteering (just in time!). One Ernst and Young consultant wrote, “[The] pandemic did not necessarily create any new challenges for supply chains. In some areas, it brought to light previously unseen vulnerabilities including staff shortages and losses due to closures. But overall, the pandemic accelerated and magnified problems that already existed in the supply chain.”
But again, the solutions that “experts” will seek out won’t address the source of the problem—greed and excessive profiteering. Instead, the solutions will try to protect greed and excessive profiteering from future disruption.
But for those who want to be cleansed of “leprosy,” of being desensitized to the sin of this world, Jesus reaches out and touches us and says, “I am willing.”
Father, You provide hope and courage for Your children in a broken world. Forgive us for accepting the sinfulness of this world so easily. But thank You for reaching out to me and healing me. I don’t want to be “of this world” any more but “of Your kingdom.” Help me to live in the healing hand of Your touch so that I may bear witness to Your love and Your power. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
