Withered
Advent 2025, Day 16
Luke 6:6-11, Matthew 12:9-14
You might be like that man in the synagogue. The crippled one. This may as well be your name, this disability that you carry everywhere, that has sidelined every dream or plan and directed your life’s path.
This is what you see:
Withered.
Un-useable.
Useless.
You do not ask for anything today. You hold no expectations. You simply show up like you’re supposed to. You do all the things and you wait, though you no longer know why nor for what. You’re used to being invisible, prefer things that way. So you stand near the walls, linger in the shadows. Unseen.
But today the teachers watch you with greedy, suspicious glances. Why? What do they want? They point at you and whisper, then look at the Teacher. What is this? You don’t want this attention. Panic rises in you when the Teacher speaks, calling you out of your dark corner.
“Come and stand here,” he says, and you must. Everyone watches. But you keep your eyes down until the silence makes you lift them. His eyes fasten on yours, and he sees you. He speaks of your value. You.
“Stretch out your hand.” He does not take His eyes from yours. You lift your withered flesh, slow, fearful. Then you feel a tingling of life, the sudden straightening of your bent flesh, cramped and twisted fingers stretching long and smooth. You look down to see you are whole. Your astonished, tearful eyes lift back to His smile.
Do you notice the current of outrage around you? It hardly matters. All you can do is stare from the man back to your impossible hand. A hundred gawkers and cynics and well-wishers crowd around to ask you a hundred questions at once. Who was that man? What did he do to you? What did he say? How do you feel? Can you wiggle your fingers?
You begin to understand how your life has changed, your very identity. You are now the one who was healed. It doesn’t matter that you did not chose this. You are now the messenger of the only One who ever fully saw you. The One who knew your value. He gave you this gift: to be the one who knows you are loved and seen, to know the One who heals withered hands can also heal withered souls, which is the true miracle. You bear the marks of His love. It is up to you what you do with them.
**
Maybe you are that man. Or maybe you’re the one who holds everything together, who has built your life on careful guidelines, on Knowing What Is Required. You work hard at looking the part even as you secretly worry that there is something else to do. You need to know yourself to be enough, so you measure yourself by the stick you are given, even though it is constantly changing.
Then comes this Teacher who breaks all the rules, yet the people love and revere him. This cannot be the way! Then you see that shriveled up hand smooth and straighten. You don’t notice so much the joy of the healed cripple, but all the eyes suddenly turned away from you. You don’t see the compassion in Jesus’s eyes but the wreck He has made of your following, the joke he has made of your dutiful life.
If you are not careful, you will soon find yourself in a mob before a judge, raising your fist and your voice in condemnation. You will watch him die with satisfaction and wait for your kingdom to be restored.
But the world will not applaud you. It will pity you your smallness. And even those who do not follow him will see you as you are. You will be the one to drive the nails into the very Truth you vowed to uphold.
But maybe, instead, you come near to listen. He turns his gaze on you. Yes, he tears down everything. But it is worth it. He starts from scratch out of the rubble of your soul, and his work bears the marks of his love. It is up to you what you do with them.
**
Or maybe you are the other cripple in the synagogue. The one he doesn’t heal. Maybe your infirmity is less noticeable, but still, you know yourself diseased, unwhole. You see the healing with rising hope and wait your turn. You believe!
But the miracle does not happen. The Man disappears in the tide of wonder and chaos. You visit the synagogue again and again, but you do not find him. You cry out to God, the same prayer as always.
Why?
Why this?
Why me?
You carry your suffering, while everywhere you hear of this Jesus. The One who passed you by.
And you, too, must choose. You can rage, or you can be still. You can fill your mind with all the churning of all the unanswered questions, or You can listen. You can open to the words. You can ask your suffering what it has to say. You can ask for his healing, which he always gives, but which you must receive. It may not be the kind of healing you seek. And then you will see that your pain is a gift that slows you to hear him, that takes you deep into your self’s raw wounds.
“Stretch out your soul,” he says. As you do so, your shriveled self begins to straighten.
The worth of that moment holds so much more than the fix you sought that would have driven your heart further from your true home. You, too, bear the marks of His love. It is up to you what you do with them.
**
We are a people shriveled with pride. He isn’t interested in justifying our outrage. He has come to heal. But we will only be healed to the extent that we know our need, because he wants to heal us all the way. He comes to us, but we must stretch toward Him too, offering Him all the withered places.
If you are the one who was healed, you bear the marks of His love. What will you do with them?
If you are not healed, you can listen to your suffering. You can ask what it has to say about your soul. You can ask for the true healing and open yourself to receive it.
