New Shoes

Monday, 20. August 2007 by Dan Ryan

By Dan Ryan

Am I all alone here, or is there something more than meets the eye to a new pair of shoes?
I can’t quite put my finger on this mystery, but whenever I’m wearing a new pair of shoes, life is that much better. The cushy support, the bright white look, even that new-shoe smell makes me feel good. This week, I found myself in need of some new running shoes. So there I was, walking into “Body N’ Sole”, a shoe store near where I live. After I bought my shoes, I got into of my car and began to think about the layers of truth underneath that catchy store name.
Body N’ Sole. Body and soul. The physical and spiritual. I began to ponder how interconnected these two entities have always been. Really, they’ve proven to be inseparable buds for the past 2 milleniums -  at least since the time of Jesus. 
 
For some Jews, their physical ailments made them “ceremonially unclean”; thus, they were banned from worshipping in the temple. The bond between the physical and spiritual was so strong that sometimes the Jewish people went a little overboard in linking the two. The Pharisees, and even some of Jesus’ disciples, mistakenly attributed diseases such as blindness, deafness, leprosy, etc to sins that the person must have committed in their past. Physical and spiritual. Body and soul.  
There are almost 30 separate instances of Jesus healing people physically. His reputation preceding Him, the masses flocked to Jesus for physical healing - much more than spiritual healing; but they usually ended up getting both. In many of these stories, simple faith and physical well-being were intrinsically linked. Once again, the physical and spiritual. Body and soul, side by side.
Among the most prominent of these healings by Jesus was that of a paralyzed man with 4 true-blue friends (best version is in Mark 2). To get the paralytic to Jesus, these comrades plowed through every obstacle, including a roof. Upon seeing this man lowered in front of Him, Jesus spiritually healed the man by erasing all his sin. This would’ve been a landmark healing because it would’ve marked the first and only time I can recollect Jesus healing someone spiritually without attending to his physical handicap. Luckily (for this guy, at least), some teachers of the law are there to screw it all up.

Basically, they murmur, “Whoa, back up the bus, rabbi. Only God can forgive sins.” So Jesus confronts them - posing this puzzler for them to chew on:

“Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?”

    —Mark 2:9
Hmm…on one hand, it was “easier” for Jesus to say “your sins are forgiven”, than to actually heal the man - for who could actually prove his sins were indeed not forgiven? Clever. Slick. But on the other hand, if Jesus actually could forgive a person’s sins—this would be the larger miracle by far. (By the way, don’t you oftentimes find yourself in the same boat as these teachers - doubting that God could completely and permanently blot out our screw-ups? I often do.)
Well, Jesus didn’t wait around for an answer this time, instead he commanded this widely known paralytic to get up and walk out of this crowded house…oh, and don’t forget your mat while you’re at it. It was the equivalent of a 2-for-1 coupon, except this guy wasn’t just walking away with a couple boxes of Cheereos cereal. He had been completely healed—okay everyone, altogether now—physically and spiritually. Body and Soul. 

Jesus had convincingly shown his authority over both Body and Soul…

As a Believer, do you fully trust Jesus?  Or has your faith in Him been faltering lately?  Do you fully trust Him with your Body and Soul?  You can… You can fully trust Jesus with all the needs of your Body, and the needs of your Soul.  He has the love, and authority, to fully lift you up in both of these areas.