On swollen knees, community, and the God who heals

This week, I had a doctor's visit with a physiatrist from the Walnut Hill family.  I've had chronic pain and swelling in my knees for ten years, and to be honest, I had pretty much ignored the obvious signs that something was wrong.  In hindsight, I'm 26 and relatively healthy--so I should really be able to jump my horse, go for a run, or play some light tennis without my knees swelling up to the size of saucers.  As I was telling my doctor about my symptoms, he cracked a joke about how people who let these things persist for say, ten years without seeing a doctor, are pretty delinquent.  I then had to admit to him (rather sheepishly) that no, I hadn't been to see a doctor about my problem since it first showed up when I was 16.  Oops.

The good news is that with physical therapy, nutritional supplements to boost my joints' ability to repair themselves, and maybe some ugly old lady shoes from the podiatrist, the problem (stemming in an alignment issue with my hips and my flat feet) should be corrected in time.

The whole thing got me thinking, though.  I mean, I'm generally a lot more disciplined about my spiritual health than I am about my physical health.  But in both arenas, there is sickness I ignore at times.  I want to believe in my own self-sufficiency.  I want to believe there's nothing wrong.  I live on the surface of things instead of in reality sometimes. 

#prettydelinquent

At the heart of it--if I'm really honest with myself, and with you, dear reader--I don't believe the gospel.  Ouch.  That is tough to write.  But here's how I know it: If I really believed that Jesus is after Restoration, if I really trusted that he came to redeem me, body and soul, then I would jump at the chance to be healed.

This idea that our bodies are of secondary importance to our souls smacks of the Gnosticism the Early Church battled.  God has created us as people with bodies, after all.  Christ came to us in a body.  And therefore, God cares very much about our bodies and what we do with them.

I confess that it is difficult for me to believe that healing in my body is oh-so-connected to the gospel.  That is why I've ignored my swollen knees for ten years.

Last night, I was at a worship gathering at my friends the Mancinis' house.  As I tried to get settled on the floor of the living room, I was suddenly hyper-aware of the pain in my knees.  It's nothing new for me to have to switch positions every two minutes because of the discomfort caused when I sit cross-legged--but for some reason, I was suddenly aware of how abnormal that is at my age.  (There is something powerful about finally, finally voicing our need.) 

After we sang six or eight songs and lots of people prayed about a variety of things, I confessed my brokenness before my community--the group of college students and 20-and-30-somethings present.  After I shared my story and prayed thanking God for his grace to me even when I ignore my own need, my friends laid hands on my knees and began to pray.  They prayed for God's Kingdom to break out in my body.  For God to do a miraculous work.  For faith that we would believe in Him as the Able Healer.
 
And an amazing thing happened: although my knees are still cracking and my hips are still misaligned, the pain is gone!  I can kneel.  I can sit cross-legged.  I was even able to ride today, short stirrups and all, with no discomfort.  He is able.

Someone prayed last night regarding Luke's account of the paralytic whose friends lowered him through the roof to get him in front of Jesus.  I feel a lot like that man, who was healed through the faith of his friends.  Community is a beautiful thing.

I gather that I will still need physical therapy, and the vitamins, and maybe even the ugly shoes to restore my body to its proper order.  {{thank you, Father, for the way your healing can come in practical, everyday ways!}}  But I'm praising God today for the reminder that when we call out to Him, He is faithful to answer us.  The physical healing I received this weekend is a signpost to me of a spiritual reality.  In the face of our delinquency, God is merciful.  He meets our brokenness with boundless grace.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7

He is Risen!

If you called any member of my friend Sarah's family today, he or she would answer the phone with a hearty "He is risen!" The obligatory (and joyful!) response is "He is risen, indeed!"

I love that! He is risen, and it's beautiful to reflect on that truth on this Resurrection Sunday.

My family had a lovely Easter celebration in Savannah, GA, where we've convened for a long weekend. (Taylor and I made a little road trip down from Birmingham.) We attended a service at Independent Presbyterian Church this morning, where the senior pastor is a Gordon-Conwell grad. Lowell Mason, the musician who wrote the music to several famous hymns, including "My Faith Looks Up To Thee" (one that the Walnut Hill band played last weekend at the Strand!) and "The Wondrous Cross" played the organ there back in the 1820s.

Probably my favorite thing about IPC was that the choir loft is in the back of the church, situated in a balcony high above the congregation. It's so powerful to be led into worship from the back of the church--especially when the sung worship includes the Halellujah chorus from Handel's Messiah. Needless to say, Mom was in tears!

I want to know Christ--yes, to know the power of his resurrection and the participation of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:10-11

The Lion King, Forbidden Fruit, and an Enemy Who Fears Us

One of the highlights of my weekend was hanging out with the kids I live with and watching the Lion King. They are still on a Disney high from their recent trip to Orlando, so the movie was preceded by a show of their own to songs from the soundtrack. After their stellar performance, we settled in with a "snacky" dinner of cheese and crackers and chocolate milk for a wonderful movie that I hadn't seen in several years.

When The Lion King first came out, I was a slightly self-righteous nine-year-old with an ax to grind against Disney for all the "circle of life" nuances in the movie. My irritation didn't stop me from loving the movie itself (in fact, my baby sister who was just two at the time watched it every day for nearly a year, and I joined her quite regularly), but it did prevent me from noticing some of the overtly biblical themes woven throughout the plot. It's amazing how a crew of Disney filmmakers can write such a redemptive story, probably without even realizing it! It speaks to John Eldredge's theory that the story of redemption is written all around us in the world, and especially in movies, precisely because God created the world to speak of His Son.

Probably the most striking example of this, at least in my mind, is the relationship between prince Simba and his uncle, the villain Scar. Scar is jealous of his brother, Mufasa, the true king, and of Simba, heir to the throne and is plotting to take over the Prideland. There are two critical events as all of this is unfolding. In the first, Scar, knowing that Mufasa has told Simba not to venture outside the Prideland, practically dares the young cub to do so. He lies to Simba about an elephant graveyard where only the bravest lions go. Suddenly, we can see the resemblance between this devious lion and the Father of Lies, that serpent who dared Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Of course, once Simba has taken the dare and been rescued from near death at the hand of the hyenas, Scar is the first to cast shame. "Simba, everybody knows about that," he says looking down his nose at embarrassed Simba. And isn't this just how our Enemy comes against us?! By first tempting us and making sin look so desirable, and then pointing the finger in our faces once sin has yielded its painful consequences.

Second, Scar creates a plan with the hyenas to kill both the king and the prince. Scar tells Simba that his father has a gift to give him, but he must wait patiently in the gorge. Meanwhile, the hyenas startle a large herd of wildebeests, creating a frantic stampede headed straight for Simba. Scar plays the hero by fetching Mufasa and alerting him to what is about to unfold, and Mufasa hurries to rescue his cub. But just as the king hurls Simba safely unto a rock above the pounding hooves of the wildebeests, Scar cruelly throws him down into the stampede, out of Simba's sight. When the dust has settled, Simba finds his father lying lifeless in the middle of the gorge. Scar approaches and, with a look of sheer evil, asks Simba what he's done. As Simba tries through tears to explain what has happened, Scar tells him to run away and never return. Simba does run away, leaving Scar to take the throne and weave a tangled web of famine and hunger. And this is the most cruel tactic of our Enemy as well: through his lies he convinces us of our guilt, rendering us useless for the Kingdom of God as we run away from our calling with our tail between our legs.

All of this symbolism, and we haven't even gotten to the redemptive part of the story yet!! After hiding out in the jungle with Timone and Pumba, Simba's childhood friend Nala finds him and tells him about the awful things that have happened since he left. Simba stubbornly refuses to go back, until he happens to meet Rafiki, the baboon. Rafiki, who understands Simba's place as the true king, reminds Simba of his calling. "I know who you are," says the baboon. "You're Mufasa's boy!" The monkey wisely reminds Simba that who he is isn't nearly as important as whose he is. Simba goes back to the Prideland and does battle with Scar in order to restore the Prideland. We all need a Rafiki in our lives to remind us that we belong to the King and have been called to defend His Kingdom!

The spiritual implications of this movie speak to our lives in Christ. It is true that we are in a battle for the Kingdom of God and for our own hearts! To quote Eldredge again (from Waking the Dead), "You have an Enemy who knows what you could be and fears you!" And friends, this is perhaps the truest lesson of The Lion King: that just as much as we serve a God who is after our hearts, we also have an Enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy them (this is after all, why Paul commends us to "put on the full armor of God"). We can choose to allow the Father of Lies to defeat us with our own guilt or we can choose to remember the One to whom we belong and to courageously fight, taking our place in the Kingdom as co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).

"Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." Hebrews 10:22