It’s been a lonely week for me. A week of being shunned! A week of walking into a room and people screaming and walking away. A week of no one even wanting to touch something I touched!
Why the sudden discrimination? Why does everyone suddenly hate Allen?
A cold.
I have been plagued with it since last weekend, and it’s caused me to ponder how the general population treats sick people, myself included. I was shunned, because no one wants to get sick, especially in the radio business. (you’ll understand if you heard any of my shows last week)
This reaction of shunning the ill…correction shunning the contagious ill, continues to get more dramatic the worse the disease.
I avoid coming in contact with people with a cold as well as I can too. Two Christmases ago, my wife got hit with the flu, very hard. I’ve never seen my wife so sick, and I didn’t even kiss her for two weeks! My wife and I love to snuggle and be close, and I avoided contact as much as I could during those weeks. It was ridiculously hard!!
Yet, I still avoided her. Did my fear of getting sick over come the love of my wife? No, I still took care of her, but I didn’t express my love how I like to express it over that time.
If we go to such extremes for a cold or the flu, how extreme would our reaction be if we came in contact with someone with the plague, tuberculosis, or Leprosy?
So imagine the feeling of having a cold or the flu (people avoiding you wise) and multiply that by about a hundred.
Then imagine a man who has no fear of you, in fact comes closer to you then touches you! And after the touch you’re healed!
I bring this up, not to talk so much about the healing part, but the love part. And the very nature of the man who has no fear of the very sick.
Can you imagine, truly though. Being shunned by all, including family and friends because of your terrible or deadly disease, and suddenly this man comes with no fear and shows you the greatest kindness you have ever known. The greatest love you have ever known.
Christ does this again and again in the Bible, not just for physical ailments but those of the spirit as well. Which is Christ’s main concern in the first place.
He is still doing that to this day. Reaching out to those everyone else has shunned. And he says I love you, and I can heal what is making you so sick. I don’t fear or loathe you. I love you.
Mark 2
16When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” 17And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”