What is lame is healed?
Wednesday 4 January 2023
The ‘yard’ with the drag,
before the last 1.5 feet of snow.
First Kings 19:7
The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’
Hebrews 12:12-13
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
Words of Grace For Today
As the years accumulate and take their toll on my body, more and more joints complain, some very loudly and persistently.
Whether it’s arthritis or decayed bones or broken tendons, muscles, and blood vessels, the complaining is voracious when it comes to consuming my time and abilities.
Ah, such is life past it’s best by date.
It’s not that the journey is over. There’s lots of time travelling (forward one day at a time) left. And I hear more than just angels telling me to get up and eat to strengthen my body, mind, and spirit for the day’s travels.
The 1.3 km path through the woods into the meadow is already providing challenges. With the snow already at the beginning of January as deep as it was at the end of winter last year, the coming and going is tricky to say the least. So much of my time and resources are spent (despite complaining joints) to make the path smooth, or at least smooth enough that I can continue to drag the route in with a piece of roofing tin supported by an odd assortment of screwed together wood. That beats the snow into a hard packed mess that makes it a bit easier coming and going, a bit, but not enough.
Now I would love to have the joints healed, and the road bed (the dirt, grass, and rock surfaces) make level so that snow clearing were so much simpler and coming and going when it all melts and turns to soft mud would be predictably possible. I haven’t seen that yet.
So I love this passage’s promise, but I just don’t see it happening.
Rather time travel steals more and more usefulness from my joints, and that’s just life, or at least life past one’s best by date.
Another day of challenges, meeting them as best as possible, trusting that God walks with me always. Do God’s joints complain when God walks with me? Kind of think they must, or at least something similarly, so that God has compassion and mercy and at least heals my spirit, one day at a time.