14 ¶ And when they were come to the multitude, there came
to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and
saying,
15 Lord, have mercy on my
son: for he is lunatic, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire,
and oft into the water.
16 And I brought him to
thy disciples, and they could not cure him.
17 Then Jesus answered and
said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how
long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.
18 And Jesus rebuked the
devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.
(Matt. 17:14-18)
It struck me as I was
reading this how odd it was that the child often fell into the fire or the
water. A footnote on the “falling” says the Greek means “throws himself”
instead of falling. So this child is actually trying to destroy himself, not
falling accidentally. The child was vexed and suffering mentally-emotionally to
such an extent that the only way he could think of to end it was to try to kill
himself.
And actually, Jesus seems to
have understood this. His statement, “how long shall I be with you? How long
shall I suffer you?” shows that Jesus knew what it felt like to suffer at
length and wonder how long it would go on and when it would all be over. His description of “faithless and perverse”
shows that He knew a lack of faith and perverse tendencies contributed to the
suffering the child was going through. The
fact that He rebuked shows that the child needed to learn some principles and
the fact that He cast out a devil shows that there was a devil that was
involved in the child’s suffering, making it worse.
If we ever feel like we can’t
go on through our suffering, we need to fast and pray and exert our faith. We can get through it. Christ can help us
get through it. Take it moment by moment, day by day.
0 comments:
Post a Comment