Balancing Comfort, Adventure, And Caution

Balancing Comfort, Adventure, and Caution

The LORD will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. Isaiah 58:11

Rachel agreed to go on her college group’s mission tour—and hated every minute of it. She griped about the heat and dust. She complained that the local people stared at her clothing. She groaned when reminded that morning showers were limited to five minutes. She whined about the lumpy bed. And she complained about the national food. After listening to yet another complaint ending with “Why can’t these people do it the right way?” the team leader took her aside.

“Rachel, these people aren’t wrong; they’re just different. How would you feel if they visited our town and complained that we were doing things wrong?”

His words hit their target, and for the rest of the trip Rachel limited her complaints to occasional sighs and silent vows that she would never again travel outside her borders. How sad that rather than enjoy this vast, exciting world, she demanded that everything fit her definition of “right.”

I like my familiar comforts too. But like Rachel’s youth leader, I learned a long time ago the difference between “wrong” and “just different.” One thing that helped me to develop a less rigid attitude was the realization that Jesus didn’t limit himself to only one “correct” way of healing. Sometimes he healed with a touch, as in Matthew 8:15 when he touched the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law or in Mark 1:41 when he touched the leper.

Sometimes he spoke, as in Mark 3:5 when he commanded the man with the shriveled hand to stretch it out, or in Matthew 8:32 when he commanded demons to come out of men and go into a nearby herd of swine.

Sometimes he sent his healing ahead, as in the account in Matthew 8:13 when the centurion asked for healing for his servant at home.

And occasionally he even spit, as in John 9:6 when he spit into the dirt to make a mud paste for the blind man’s eyes. I confess, I don’t like that miracle. Not only do I find it disgusting, but it is outside my definition of how Jesus should heal. I have to wonder if I have refused his miracles in my own life because they didn’t come in what I thought should be the correct package. —SANDRA

Lord, help me not to demand that others or you do things my way. And help me to rejoice in your miracles no matter how they are packaged.

Every time I reject Jesus’ ability to handle any problem of my life, I am rejecting Him as the Lord of Life. —CATHERINE MARSHALL (1914–1983), WRITER