The edge of his cloak
People brought all their sick to him and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed. -Matthew 14:35-36
How Jesus Loved People
People from all around brought their sick to Jesus, and everyone who touched the edge of his cloak was healed.
I did a search on the definition of a cloak, and this was the first thing that came up: An outdoor overgarment, typically sleeveless, that hangs from the shoulders.
That confirmed what I already suspected,
I don’t even own a cloak.
And if I did, anyone who touched it wouldn’t be healed.
In contrast to an average Joe like me, Jesus healed all manner of sickness. He healed lepers (once he healed ten at a time), paralytics, people with withered hands, bleeding women, blind men, dying children, and epileptics. He healed deaf men, women with fevers, and he reattached severed body parts. He even raised people from the dead.
Jesus favored healing people by touching them. Occasionally he healed remotely, by just saying it would happen, it happened. He preferred to heal instantaneously, as opposed to progressively. He liked to heal totally and completely, as opposed to partial healing.
Jesus loved people–by healing them.
How to Love Like Jesus–A Baby’s Skull Removed
My wife Kathy is a great example of how someone without a cloak can heal people. When our grandson Andrew was 9 months old, he had a deformity of his skull called Bilateral Isolated Frontosphenoidal Craniosynostosis. That’s a fancy medical term that means the part of Andrew’s skull behind his eyes and around his left temple wasn’t growing as fast as it should. Without surgical intervention, the left frontal lobe of his brain wouldn’t have enough room to grow properly. The surgery was complicated and involved folding down Andrew’s face and removing the front part of his skull, including the forehead. But the left frontal lobe is the part of the brain that provides our speech and language function. So no intervention could possibly result in a compromised ability to talk, read, and write.
The required surgery was also expensive and involved travel. The hospital where the procedure would be performed was Phoenix Children’s Hospital, in Phoenix, Arizona, a thousand miles away from our home in Oregon.
So Kathy organized a massive garage sale to raise money for the cause. She also arranged for us to travel with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson to provide support out in Arizona. After the surgery, Kathy was over at our son and daughter-in-law’s almost every day. She did anything she could to help with the healing process. (If you’re interested, you can read more in a previous post: You Are the Body of Christ)
Fast forward 18 months: As I write this post, my daughter-in-law is on our couch downstairs recovering from a broken foot. She broke her foot while chasing a very healthy and energetic two-year-old Andrew. So Andrew is healed. And Kathy is helping–again. She’s helping Andrew’s mother with the healing of a broken foot. She’s watching Andrew, and serving our daughter-in-law food, and putting ice on her foot, and driving her to the doctor’s office, and doing everything and anything she can to help the healing process. She’s healing by touching, she’s touching the life of Charise, our daughter-in-law.
And while all that’s going on, Kathy’s on the phone with doctors and relatives, helping an older family member (who lives in Chicago, 2,000 miles away) negotiate the process of major oral surgery. So she’s also healing remotely, if you will.
You’re probably like me in that, you don’t own a cloak, and if someone touched it, they wouldn’t be healed anyway. But that’s OK. There’s plenty you can do to help the healing process. Next time your neighbor, or your friend, or your family member needs healing, instead of focusing on what you can’t do, focus on what you can do, then do everything you can, to help the healing process.
So do it.
Do everything you can, to help them heal.
Jesus did.
You can too.
[Image via floridjohn – Creative Commons]