The Difference Between Curing and Healing
In High School my primary interest and activity was playing basketball. I had some skill but not as much as many others. So I spent my first three years working hard in practice but, mostly, sitting on the bench on game day. Finally my Senior year rolled around and, along with it, my big chance to be a starter. Then disaster. Early in the very first game I ran back on defense, jumped to block a shot, and wound up on the bottom of a pile of players with a wrist broken in six places. That season was over for me.

In those days there was no miracle therapy, no flexible casts, just a hard hunk of plaster that must have weighed twenty pounds. I lugged that thing around for three months, during which I learned to do lots of things left-handed. I couldn't wait for that cast to be removed. Unrealistically, I thought that I would instantly be "good as new" when the cast came off. Imagine my surprise as I looked at that shriveled-up, weakened arm that didn't even seem to belong to me. I hated that ugly, weak, pathetic hand and avoided using it. It took a long time for me to rebuild the muscle and skin cells-to be completely convinced that I was back to normal. And even for awhile after I had full use of my right hand, by force of habit, I favored it, acting as if it were still injured.

That's the way it is, not just with illness, but all kinds of life-inflicted hurts and setbacks. The sense of being "damaged goods" doesn't readily go away. Long after the damage we still feel vulnerable, lacking in energy and enthusiasm. We wonder if we'll ever totally recover.

It's this sort of experience that teaches us the difference between curing and healing. We can come up with quick-fixes to solve immediate problems and mistakes, we can let go of broken relationships, or say to ourselves that's "what's done is done" but the true healing will come only with time. The full restoration of our wholeness, security, and confidence isn't easily or quickly mended. Only God is able to replace doubt, mistrust, suspicion, and disappointment with a new sense of life and health. Though the pain and the danger may be totally past, we have to believe and accept renewal before it becomes real to us.

A perfect example of all this is in Luke 13:10-17. Here, we're introduced to a woman who had "a spirit of infirmity" for 18 years. Notice it doesn't say she actually WAS infirm. Her quality of life was totally compromised because she thought or she "seemed to remember" she had a problem. She went about hunched-over in a posture of defeat. Though nothing was wrong with her now, she still lived in the pain of whatever it was that years ago had befallen her. Jesus knew what she was going through. He touched her with reassurance and acceptance. He asks her to let go of the past, to live in the moment. And she does!

God promises to us as individuals, to our families, even to our church that we will receive the power to stand up straight, to reenter life fully, and to move forward with confidence. God promises to walk with us as we undertake that walk of faith but- and this is the critical key to the whole thing- first we have to recognize that our life is being negatively influenced and controlled by events and circumstances of the past. Things that are past don't have to limit our present. We can move beyond them and the wonderful news is that God will be with us on every step of that journey.