I’m so moved by how Jesus interacts with each person so differently. Even how he heals is unique every time. He’s stepping into the life and heart of each person in the way that they are most hungry for love.
Jesus doesn’t always touch people when he heals them. But the leper, whose greater pain is probably that people give him a wide berth, fear to come close to him. Jesus touches him to heal him, touches him while he is still a leper. We each get access to that kind of love in Jesus and there’s nothing as enthralling as being loved that particularly where we are most disgusting.
I’ve been thinking about wonder lately, that it seems to be the critical ingredient in a lot of different aspects of thriving. Praise, thanksgiving. But also being able to love like Jesus loves. When I’m really steeped in the wonder of how he loves me this way, loving someone else when I’m really put off by them becomes a whole lot more natural.
“It’s precisely within the contour of one’s shame that one is summoned to wholeness. ‘Even there, even there,’ Psalm 139 tells us—even in the darkest place, we are known—yes, even there. My own falsely self-assertive and harmful, unfree ego gets drawn into the expansive heart of God. It is precisely in the light of God’s vastness and acceptance of me that I can accept the harm I do for what it is. There is a longing in us all to be God-enthralled. So enthralled that to those hunkered down in their disgrace, in the shadow of death, we become transparent messengers of God’s own tender mercy. We want to be seized by that same tenderness; we want to bear the largeness of God.” – Fr. Greg Boyle
