No Formula

“Healing is not a formula it’s a process.”

Loren Thornburg

Healing is not math, it is not a science. A plus B does not always get you C. There is no “one” way to get from here to healed. Yet, often we treat it like that or expect that it should work like that. Often because we see what it looks like for other people. We see or hear stories of another person’s healing and think our own should look the same. However we are forgetting some key factors in this assumption. We are not all the same. You are very unique in your personality and ways that you think, act and feel. Thus, even if A plus B did get someone else C, you are not ‘A’ and your process is going to look very different as a result of that. Also, you are seeing someone else’s process from the outside and experiencing your own on the inside. What looks easy on the outside may be causing much more pain on the inside than you see. Healing has no formula, for the ways it comes, in the times it come, and to the extent that it comes. But, it does grow, you do change, and you do heal as you are willing to let it be a process.

“Then Jesus placed his hands over the man’s eyes again. As the man stared intently, his sight was completely restored, and he could see everything clearly.”

Mark 9:25 NLT

In reading this story of Jesus healing a blind man at Bethsaida my first reaction is confusion. This is not the usual healing story. Usually when Jesus touches someone for healing they are healed, and not just halfway healed, but fully healed. Yet, in this story it seems to take Jesus two tries to heal the blind man. When we can move past the question of why we can see some very powerful aspects of healing, (which if you’re like me if often takes some help and time to move past the why’s). Look past with me and see the heart of Jesus. He is committed to seeing the blind man fully healed. He doesn’t stop with the man being able to see a little but continues working and healing until the blind man’s sight was “completely restored, and he could see everything clearly.” Now, although for the blind man this seems like a relatively short process we still see there was a process. A process that began long before his encounter with Jesus but involved years of blindness, friends getting him there, his willingness to trust Jesus to spit on his eyes, and to keep believing that Jesus could heal him. So, in our blindness let’s keep believing through the process of our healing knowing that Jesus is about complete restoration.