Great Expectations

I have been reading the book of Mark before I go to bed each night. Last night, I read the following:

"And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four.

⁴And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.

⁵When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.

⁶But there was certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts,

⁷Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?

⁸And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts?

⁹Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?

¹⁰But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,)

¹¹I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.

¹²And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion."

As I read the passage, the order of events struck me as odd. Here is a man who desperately needs to be physically HEALED. His friends go through all this effort to drop him through the roof to be HEALED by Jesus. The most obvious thing that needs to be done is the HEALING of this man's body. (Did I drive home my point enough?) What happens when he finally is set before Jesus? Jesus sees faith and forgives the man's sin.

Maybe you are on a holier plain than I, but my first thought was, "Forgiving his sins? What about the poor guy's body?" Forgiveness was not what I expected. I have heard the story hundreds of times, but I never realized the order of the events--or the significance. I had to put myself in the place of this man. Here I am, finally getting my chance after years of suffering to be healed. There is all this build up as my friends rip up the roof to lower me through. I am laying at the feet of Jesus and He says, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." I don't know if that is what the man expected, but it wouldn't be what I expected. I would have expected Him to tell me to get up and run a few laps around the synagogue. I wish I knew what was going through that guy's mind when Jesus forgave him of his sins first. Was that what he expected??

As I read on into the chapter, I realized that in a way, I was having an attitude like that of the scribes. I wasn't questioning Jesus' ability to forgive sins, but I was questioning his judgment. Who was I to decide what needed to happen first? Who were these scribes to question Him? Who was I to say the order of how the Son of God does things?

As I thought more about it, the order of events made more sense. What was more important--the forgiveness of this man's sins or the healing of his body? Obviously, the forgiveness of his sins should have been the first thing on his mind when coming before the Son of God. Hopefully, this man was nothing like me--I would have expected to be healed. Yet, God did something much greater for this man than healing his physical body.

I wrote all this to say this--how often do we expect God to work in a certain way and it doesn't turn out how we think it should? I know I am so guilty of thinking I know how things should work out. Admit it! We all have these grand ideas and then we realize that our Heavenly Father has something even greater for us, beyond what we have expected. For instance, the man in the book of Mark probably never expected to be healed. He probably never expected to have the Son of God ever come near enough to him to be healed. When he saw the crowd he probably never expected to get close enough to have a chance encounter. The list could go on and on.

Recently, my expectations have not been great by any means. In fact, I would say I have been expecting the worst. The truth is, we should expect great things. We have a mighty God who thought enough of us to die for us. Does this mean that everything will be great and perfect? No. Does that mean that God's plan always include only hilltops and no valleys? No way. Should we always expect our will to be the best way? You have got to be kidding! What we do have is hope. We should also expect our God to do great things. You will find that He exceeds even our greatest hopes.