Dead End

            Nobody likes a dead end.  It doesn’t go anywhere.  We want a thoroughfare that will get us places. 

            Jesus, the Way, didn’t like dead ends, either.  Many people have wondered why Jesus, as He did in Luke 5:14, would order people not to say anything about the miracle he had just performed.  Recently, I think I finally came to an understanding of one possible reason why He might have done that. 

            It is so easy to be arrested by a remarkable occurrence.  We see a striking sunrise and just stand there sometimes until the colors fade.  A healing miracle, such as the cleansing of leprosy, would be a sunrise that would never set for the person on the receiving end.  It would be so easy just to stand still and exclaim over and over, “I’m clean!  I’m clean!”  It would be easy to marvel at the right to reenter society, rather than to reenter it. 

            Jesus never wanted anyone to be stuck in what He had done for them.  He wanted them to use what had been restored in every day life to be a help and testimony to others.  I was once in a church building that had a display of crutches and medical graces on the wall.  The people were healed, I knew that from the display, but I didn’t know what they had done for Jesus as a result of being healed.  In fact it was more a testimony to the former bondage than the present freedom. 

            Whenever Jesus does something for you, be thankful for it, but then give the Glory to God and get on about the life that Jesus has now liberated you to lead.