Friday, August 21, 2015

Experiencing True Normal

“Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.  As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.  When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’

On hearing this, Jesus said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’” (Mark 2:13-17 NIV)

My knee problems started when I was in middle school.  Playing a pick-up football game with three other kids, I tore my ACL.  I lived in a small town so our family doctor had no experience with such an injury and he misdiagnosed it.  It took six years, during which there were many re-injuries, before a university orthopedic doctor finally figured out the problem and did reconstructive surgery.  Though it was repaired, my knee was never normal again, but its limited functioning and quirks became normative for me.  The bowed leg.  Normal.  The swelling after much activity.  Normal.  The “Baker’s Cyst” behind my knee that had to be routinely drained.  Normal.  

Of course, I knew I had a bad knee, but I lived with it for so long that it was just a part of my existence.  Until a year and a half ago.  That’s when a friend told me about a doctor who could make my knee new again by replacing it.  And so I let him take out my old, worn-out joint and put in a brand new one.  Since then, I have begun to experience true normalcy again.  My leg is no longer bowed.  The swelling is gone as is the cyst.  And I am once again enjoying the freedom of doing things I once loved to do, like playing tennis and hiking.  I literally feel like a man re-born!

When I read this story, it resonates with me.  The sinners are people who I think know deep down they are in need of healing, but the way in which they think and live has become normative for them.  As with my knee, they have lived abnormally for so long, they no longer know what normal is.  Until they see the transformation of Levi and meet his Physician.  And I imagine Levi had been going about his business of tax collecting and extortion for so long, that he, too, thought he was living normally.  

It is this sense of normality that keeps us in a state of affliction.  It is what it is and we live with it.  But it doesn’t have to be that way!  There is One who desires to heal us and make us whole again.  And for those of us, like Levi, who have experienced His healing, we know there is something better if only people will receive it.  

Since my knee replacement, I have shared my story with others with chronic knee problems and have encouraged them to consider having the same procedure because of what it has done for my life.  I seek to do the same with others who are sick with sin.  I point them to Jesus.

Today, if you are tired of living the life you’ve lived for so long, then may I recommend a Doctor who can heal you?  He is Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords!  He came to heal those of us who are sickened with sin.  And if you have already met Him and experienced His healing in your life, then I urge you to go and tell others who are stuck in what they consider normal life.  They will never know what true normal is until they see it and experience it for themselves.

© Jim Musser 2015

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