Day 14-15: Healing Touch

I'm going to do the next two passages together, because they deal with one thing: healing.

^{Mark 7:31-37
31} Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.^[a]32 There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.

 ³³ After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. ³⁴ He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). ³⁵ At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.

 ³⁶ Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. ³⁷ People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

^{Matthew 15:29-31}

²⁹ Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. ³⁰ Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. ³¹The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.

Jesus has always been the master Healer. I can't help but imagine what it must have been like for someone in the first century - with no hope of help or healing - to have a face-to-face encounter with him. To witness a deaf person who could suddenly hear, or a blind person who could suddenly see. Miracles in today's society are almost viewed as a sort of joke, so to see a real one... it must have been awesome.

But in another way, we have seen it, after all. I have personally seen people and situations that I thought were beyond hope healed by the spiritual touch of Jesus. When all is lost, only he has the capability to bring thing to rights. He still has the power to heal, if we only have faith that he can. And those incredible spiritual healings will doubtless lead us to say, "He has done everything well," and praise the God of Israel.