It is difficult and painful to see someone in our family sick; and when someone young and at the prime of life becomes chronically ill, it paralyses the family. It pushes the family to helplessness. The official and his family from Capernaum go through such a dark time. When situations in life are bleak and depressing, we feel that we are buried under some dark, unreachable place. We give up.
Christine Caine, an Australian activist and international speaker, puts such situations in life in perspective. Sometime when we are in a dark place, we think we have been buried, but actually we have been planted. Caught up in the darkness of helplessness we often prematurely conclude our lives; it is so automatic, and rigid, that there seems to be nothing more to come. Christine Caine recommends loosening up our lives enough to be ready for interruptions. Let there be a few cracks that the light of God can enter in. Don't structure our days so rigidly that you lock out God from working with you in the middle of them. God is able to take the mess of our past and turn it into a message. Browsing through the stories in the gospel one easily comes in term with the difficult truth that however bleak the situation is overcoming is possible. We are planted to sprout, grow, bloom, and bear fruit. These are moments of overcoming and resurrection.
From the situation of dealing with the challenge of a fatally ill child the official and the entire household become believers. And John rightly calls it the second sign by Jesus; the first being, changing water into wine at Cana. Yes, these are signs of God planting us, deep in the darkness of the earth, in order to sprout, grow, and bloom.
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